The United States Supreme Court on late Thursday ruled that evictions can begin again across the country saying the health agency exceeded its authority in issuing the ban.
The program helps those who rent their homes and have missed payments for rent or utilities. In order to receive help from the program, people must prove that they have lost income or have been unemployed since the start of the pandemic.
The court’s decision came just a few weeks after the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) extended the COVID-19 eviction moratorium until October.
Also Read | CDC Issues Eviction Order in Areas of Substantial And High Transmission Through Oct. 3
The current moratorium, which was imposed in early August, had been due to expire in early October. It was challenged by a group of landlords who argued that the CDC had no authority to impose such a restriction on its own.
“Congress never gave the CDC the staggering amount of power it claims,” the landlords argued in their filing in the Supreme Court.
In an unsigned opinion, six justices agreed.
“It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken. But that has not happened,” they wrote. “Instead, the CDC 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 added, “It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.”
The ruling ends protracted litigation between the Biden administration and the Alabama Association of Realtors who have been fighting for months against the CDC’s ban on evictions.
The moratorium was originally put in place by Congress last year, but that elapsed in July. Then-President Donald Trump then tapped the CDC in September to prohibit evictions. The agency extended the ban in March and again in June, with the White House vowing not to extend again when it expired on July 31.
“If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it,” the high court said in its ruling, with its three liberal judges dissenting.
The White House said the Biden Administration was disappointed that the Supreme Court has blocked the most recent CDC eviction moratorium while confirmed cases of the Delta variant are significant across the country. As a result of this ruling, families will face the painful impact of evictions, and communities across the country will face greater risk of exposure to COVID-19.
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