Supreme Court Refuses to Vacate Stay of Order Invalidating CDC Eviction Moratorium

The Court lets the CDC's eviction moratorium remain in place, even though a majority seems to believe CDC's action is unlawful.

This evening the Supreme Court refused to lift a stay of a lower court order declaring the Center for Disease Control's eviction moratorium to be unlawful in Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services. Only four justices voted to grant the application to lift the stay: Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett would have lifted the stay. That means the Chief Justice and Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Kavanaugh wanted the stay to remain in place. My co-blogger Ilya Somin previously blogged on this case here.

While this is a temporary victory for the CDC's temporary moratorium, it may not last for long. Justice Kavanaugh issued this opinion concurring in the denial of the application, noting that he believes the CDC's action lacked congressional authorization:

I agree with the District Court and the applicants that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its existing statutory authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium. See Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, 573 U. S. 302, 324 (2014). Because the CDC plans to end the moratorium in only a few weeks, on July 31, and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental assistance funds, I vote at this time to deny the application to vacate the District Court's stay of its order. See Barnes v. E-Systems, Inc. Group Hospital Medical & Surgical Ins. Plan, 501 U. S. 1301, 1305 (1991) (Scalia, J., in chambers) (stay depends in part on balance of equities); Coleman v. Paccar Inc., 424 U. S. 1301, 1304 (1976) (Rehnquist, J., in chambers). In my view, clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31.

This brief opinion echoes Justice Kavanaugh's prior statements that courts should be reluctant to conclude agencies have broad regulatory authority without clear authorization from Congress. Congress clearly delegated authority to the CDC to address the spread of contagious disease, but it's not self-evident that an eviction moratorium can be properly characterized as such a measure (whether or not it could be justified on other grounds). Accordingly, Justice Kavanaugh has made clear that if there is to be such a moratorium beyond next month, that will require Congress to act.

Justice Kavanaugh's opinion also illustrates how a focus on the baseline question of whether Congress has, in fact, delegated the authority at issue to a federal agency may help address nondelegation concerns. I discussed this approach in this post and this forthcoming book chapter.

Comments

[DaivdBehar]

All executive branch regulations require Congressional approval to comply with the constitution.

[Larvell Blanks]

The district court should say, “Hey, five justices agree with me that the CDC lacked authority to issue the moratorium, so I’ll just dissolve the stay myself.”

[Mark Regan]

Not with the D.C. Circuit closely overseeing what happens next -- if this is the way Justice Kavanaugh views the merits and the equities, the D.C. Circuit will make sure that the district court keeps the stay in place.

[Aktenberg78]

We no longer live in a constitutional republic, but a lawless regime run by corrupt tyrants.

[LivNLearnPHX]

My latest theory is that Roberts and Kavanaugh are acting like faithful Catholics and refusing to be responsible for throwing countless families into homelessness during a record-breaking heatwave in the middle of a pandemic. Let McConnell take the blame - good Catholics are going to side with the same people Jesus and Francis side with.

[Aktenberg78]

First, cut the crap about "middle of a pandemic." The pandemic is over. Full stop. Second, no one being evicted would be a family. A family is a husband and wife living with children.

A single black woman with six illegitimate children with five men is not a family. That's who is representative of those who will be evicted. And they had plenty of money with the various "stimulus" to pay their bills. They just instead chose to spend it on sail phones.

[Brett Bellmore]

Seriously, you need to learn some Catholic theology.

It's all well and good and moral to be generous and merciful with your own property, but being generous with somebody else's property is just theft, not charity.