Federal Appeals Court Has Decided CDC Eviction Moratorium Is Unlawful

A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not have the authority for the national moratorium it imposed in 2020 on residential evictions to try and help stop the spread of COVID-19.

The ruling was handed down by the 6th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Cincinnati and essentially means that judges in the states of Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky, and Michigan are no longer bound by the moratorium, according to attorney Joshua Kahane, the attorney who argued this particular case on behalf of a property manager.

via Newsmax:

The unanimous decision by the three-judge panel upheld a lower court ruling in March finding the CDC overstepped its authority when it issued the moratorium last year.

The opinion by Judges Alan Norris, Amul Thapar and John Bush said dealing with the evictions during the pandemic could not be delegated to the CDC under existing law.

“While landlords and tenants likely disagree on much, there is one thing both deserve: for their problems to be resolved by their elected representatives,” Judge Thapar wrote in his opinion on the case.

The moratorium is set to expire on July 31 and the Biden administration said in June it would not grant further extensions.

Back in 2020, when the pandemic first started, the CDC had put out a national eviction ban on all residential rental properties in September to help enable folks to self-isolate as a means of helping to stop the spread of the coronavirus and to stop homelessness.