The Supreme Court ended President Joe Biden’s moratorium on evictions, stating that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had exceeded its authority.
“The C.D.C. has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination,” the opinion reads. “It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the C.D.C. the sweeping authority that it asserts.”
The opinion was not signed, though it was noted that the three liberal justices dissented.
“These questions call for considered decision-making, informed by full briefing and argument,” he wrote. “Their answers impact the health of millions. We should not set aside the C.D.C.’s eviction moratorium in this summary proceeding,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote on behalf of the dissenting judges.
However, the conservative justices write that while “It is indisputable that the public has a strong interest in combating the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant. But our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.”
“If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue,” the opinion said, “Congress must specifically authorize it.”
The decision will impact millions of Americans.
“Tonight, the Supreme Court failed to protect the 11 million households across our country from violent eviction in the middle of a deadly global pandemic,” said Representative Cori Bush. “We already know who is going to bear the brunt of this disastrous decision: Black and brown communities, and especially Black women.”
Congress had provided $46 billion for rental assistance via COVID-19 relief packages, but on Wednesday, the Treasury Department said that just $5.1 billion of that money had been disbursed.
