The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Biden Administration’s eviction Centers for Disease Control new eviction moratorium extension less than one month after it was enacted. After the original moratorium lapsed, a number of liberal lawmakers and activists pushed for continued extensions.
It was earlier in August 2021 that the CDC issued a new order temporarily halting evictions in counties with heightened levels of community transmission in order to respond to the rise of the Delta variant. The administration was hoping that a new order might be more likely to be valid than an extension.
Landlords and the Alabama Association of Realtors argued that the CDC overstepped its authority and never had “the staggering amount of power it claims.”
The unsigned decision from the court was 6-3, with the court’s three liberal justices dissenting.
The court said the CDC exceeded its authority with the temporary ban. The opinion said that the CDC for its order relied on “a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination.”
“It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts,” the majority wrote in their opinion. “If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.”