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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Landlords Lose Suit Against New York, Covid Eviction Ban Remains

“Courts are equipped with microscopes, while other branches of government have binoculars,” wrote U.S. District Judge Gary Brown, saying the court should not weigh in on the legislative eviction ban.

BROOKLYN (CN) — Citing a 1905 Supreme Court decision regarding smallpox vaccination, a federal judge held that public health eclipses individuals' challenges to legislative acts, and denied an attempt from New York landlords to block the state’s eviction ban during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

U.S. District Judge Gary Brown consolidated the landlords’ motion for preliminary injunction with the merits of the case, ruling in favor of defendant Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks and dismissing all other defendants — which included county sheriffs and other court officials — from the case. 

At the top of his ruling, Brown pulled an excerpt from Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a Supreme Court ruling from 1905 that held that requiring smallpox vaccination does not violate the due process rights of an individual.

“Whatever may be thought of the expediency of this statute, it cannot be affirmed to be, beyond question, in palpable conflict with the Constitution. Nor, in view of the methods employed to stamp out the disease of smallpox, can anyone confidently assert that the means prescribed by the state to that end has no real or substantial relation to the protection of the public health and the public safety,” reads the ruling, as quoted by Brown. 

In his 29-page order, Brown tossed out the plaintiffs’ allegations that the eviction moratorium is too vague, and that its requirement of landlords to provide tenants with a financial hardship declaration form constituted compelled speech

He explained why the plaintiffs’ due process challenge still “requires extended discussion.” 

“At first blush, the facts presented by several plaintiffs might appear to raise due process Concerns,” the judge wrote — like that the pandemic’s has evolved, with vaccination, since the ban was first enacted. 

The fundamental flaw in the due process argument, Brown said, was that “the treatment afforded a general legislative act differs from that for a case-specific determination.” 

He cited another Supreme Court case, BiMetallic Inv. Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization, which notes that when it comes to legislative policy, “[t]here must be a limit to individual argument in such matters if government is to go on.” 

Brown noted that the Legislature’s power still has constitutional limits, but that its standards are different. 

Responding to the landlords’ issue with the timing of the temporary ban, which has lasted for more than a year, Brown said the court should not second-guess the Legislature’s determinations. 

“Courts are equipped with microscopes, while other branches of government have binoculars,” Brown wrote. “Hence, broad public policy decisions are best left to those institutions.”

Five landlords, including a married couple, filed the complaint in the Eastern District of New York, describing tenants that have failed to pay rent since before the pandemic began or refused to move out after their leases expired. 

In a tearful bid to the court last week, one of the plaintiffs, single mom and Air Force veteran Brandie LaCasse, said she has been able to reclaim a home from nonpaying tenants and thus forced to live with her ex-fiancee — who wants his new flame to move in, and asked LaCasse to pay a monthly rent of $5,500 or get out. 

The named plaintiffs were joined by the Rent Stabilization Association of NYC, a real estate industry trade group that says it represents 25,000 property owners. 

Attorney Randy Mastro, of the firm Gibson Dunn, represented the plaintiffs. He did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. 

A representative of the state court system declined to comment. 

Following two extensions of the measure, New York’s eviction moratorium is set to expire at the end of August. 

Follow @NinaPullano
Categories / Business, Consumers, Courts, Government, Health, Law

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