US appeals court refuses to lift moratorium on CDC deportations

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WASHINGTON (AP) On Friday, a federal appeals court allowed a COVID-19-related federal break on deportations, setting up a likely battle before the country’s highest court.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected an offer by real estate agents in Alabama and Georgia to block the moratorium on evictions reinstated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month. The panel said the appeals court rejected a similar offer and a lower court also refused to overturn the moratorium.

In view of this decision and the case before us, we also reject the emergency request addressed to this court, the judges said in the decision.

Real estate agents are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, which voted 5-4 in June to allow the moratorium to continue until the end of July. But Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the majority, warned the administration not to act further without the explicit approval of Congress.

The Biden administration allowed an earlier moratorium to expire on July 31, saying it had no legal authority to allow it to continue. But the CDC declared a new moratorium a few days later. Pressure had grown from lawmakers and others to help vulnerable tenants stay in their homes as the delta variant of the coronavirus increased.

As of August 2, about 3.5 million people in the United States said they were at risk of deportation within the next two months, according to the Census Bureaus Household Pulse Survey.

The new moratorium has temporarily halted evictions in counties with substantial and high levels of virus transmission and would cover areas where 90% of the US population lives.

The Trump administration initially put in place a nationwide moratorium on evictions last year lest people who can’t pay rent end up in overcrowded living conditions like homeless shelters and help spread the virus.

President Joe Biden acknowledged that there were questions about the legality of the new eviction freeze. But he said a court battle over the new ordinance would save time for the distribution of some of the more than $ 45 billion in rent assistance that has been approved but not yet used.

Urging the appeals court to keep the ban in place, the Biden administration noted that the new moratorium was more focused than the nationwide ban that had expired, and that the landscape had changed since the Supreme Court ruling. due to the spread of the highly contagious delta. variant.

The landlords accused the Bidens administration of giving in to political pressure and reinstating the moratorium even though it knew it was illegal in order to buy time to distribute rent assistance.

As the president himself acknowledged, the CDC’s latest expansion is little more than a delay tactic designed to buy time to distribute rent assistance, their lawyers wrote in court documents.

A trial judge ruled earlier this month that the freeze was illegal, but dismissed the owners’ request to lift the moratorium, saying his hands were tied by an appeal decision from the last time the courts reviewed the moratorium on evictions in the spring.

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Richer reported from Boston.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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