SCOTUS ruling blocks part of illegal eviction moratorium

The Supreme Court on Thursday temporarily blocked part of an eviction moratorium put in place by New York state. It was unsigned, The Hill reported.

The ruling temporarily lifts part of New York’s policy. Landlords can challenge a tenant’s self-certified claim of financial hardship.

But the order does not interfere with a tenant’s ability to mount a so-called hardship defense in an eviction court proceeding.

There you go. NY courts almost always side with the tenant. What about the landlord who might be struggling to pay his bills?

The order will remain in place while a legal challenge plays out in a New York-based federal appeals court.

The majority wrote that NY policy appeared to violate landlords’ due process right to a hearing in the face of the tenant’s claim he couldn’t pay rent.

“This scheme violates the Court’s longstanding teaching that ordinarily ‘no man can be a judge in his own case’ consistent with the Due Process Clause,” they wrote.

The application, filed by a group of five New York property owners and a landlords’ association, was submitted to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who handles emergency matters arising from New York. She referred the matter to the rest of the justices.

Sotomayor and fellow liberal justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer dissented from the majority’s Thursday order.

Of course, they did. To Hell with the landlords in other words.

Breyer, in a five-page dissenting opinion, noted that the law is set to expire in less than three weeks, that the Empire State is distributing more than $2 billion in rental aid to cash-strapped renters and that the property owners had been rebuffed in the lower courts.

What about the landlords? This is the government picking winners and losers and the hard-working productive guy will always be last on their list.

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