Courts should reject Biden’s lawless eviction ban

Published 12:00 am Sunday, August 15, 2021

When then-President Donald Trump took action that exceeded his authority, all of Washington erupted in protest. Yet that is exactly what President Joe Biden did this month when his administration reissued a nationwide eviction moratorium after the White House had argued at length that it lacked legal authority to do so.

The Beltway response? Crickets.

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“The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,” Biden admitted. That was only hours before the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its renewed eviction ban.

“But at a minimum,” Biden said, “by the time it gets litigated, it will probably give some additional time while we’re getting that $45 billion out to people who are, in fact, behind in the rent and don’t have the money.”

Many presidents have overstepped their authority, but this is premeditated lawlessness. The government has been slow to distribute pandemic relief funds to renters. Now, to buy time, Biden signed off on an order that he admits he can’t defend in good faith.

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The CDC’s original eviction ban, which was issued in September under Trump, was extensively litigated before it expired July 31. Five federal courts, including an appellate panel at the Sixth Circuit, ruled against it. A few courts went the other way, saying landlords hadn’t met the burden required for a preliminary injunction.

But the judicial score was lopsided against the moratorium.

In justifying the ban, the government cited the Public Health Service Act of 1944. To halt disease, that law said the CDC may require “inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination” and so forth, with a final catchall phrase for “other measures.” The feds argued this was enough legal authority. But the gap between “fumigation” and “other measures” isn’t big enough for the government to shove in a ban that applies to nearly every residence in America, punishable by a year in jail.

“That reading,” the Sixth Circuit said, “would grant the CDC director near-dictatorial power for the duration of the pandemic, with authority to shut down entire industries as freely as she could ban evictions.” Maybe the CDC could mandate vaccines or prohibit layoffs nationwide. There’s no limiting principle.

When the issue reached the Supreme Court this summer, five justices let the eviction ban stand until it expired. Justice Brett Kavanaugh did so, however, as a matter of forbearance, “because the CDC plans to end the moratorium in only a few weeks.” There was zero ambiguity in his reading of the law: “In my view, clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31.”

The White House spent days telling Democrats that Biden couldn’t renew the order. “The president has not only kicked the tires; he has double-, triple-, quadruple-checked,” a senior aide said. “He has asked the CDC to look at whether you could even do targeted eviction moratoriums – that just went to the counties that have higher rates – and they, as well, have been unable to find the legal authority.”

A day later, Biden did it anyway, without so much as a legal fig leaf. The CDC’s new moratorium applies to all areas with “substantial or high levels of community transmission.” That’s 83% of counties, the CDC’s own data said.

This is disdain for the rule of law. Where is Attorney General Merrick Garland? Where are the news stories about White House lawyers trying to dissuade the president? The lesson Biden seems to have taken from Barack Obama’s “pen and a phone” phase is that a Democratic president can get away with anything. The courts should quickly tell him he can’t.