CHARLOTTE — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its authority when it imposed a federal eviction moratorium.
The Justice Department said it would appeal the ruling from the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., meaning there won’t likely be any immediate impact on the ban, which in March was extended through the end of June.
“I think a lot of confusion, a lot of fear, a lot of stress,” said Issac Sturgill, Legal Aid of North Carolina.
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He said that while he got a lot of panic calls after the ruling, the situation is a lot better than it appears to be for renters in North Carolina.
“That court has no direct authority over North Carolina courts,” Sturgill said.
The Justice Department announced it plans to file an immediate appeal.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s executive order considers that a judge could rule that the CDC moratorium is unconstitutional. In this case, it was Alabama and not the Tar Heel State.
“Unless it’s one of our courts that strikes it down, the moratorium will stay in effect,” Sturgill said. “I think the moratorium still is in effect.”
[Cooper signs order preventing evictions for North Carolinians who can’t pay rent]
Opponents of the moratorium, including the National Association of Realtors, welcomed the decision and said the solution was rental assistance, not a ban on evictions.
The Alabama and Georgia associations of realtors were among the plaintiffs in the case.
The eviction ban, initially put in place last year, provides protection for renters out of concern that having families lose their homes and move into shelters or share crowded conditions with relatives or friends during the pandemic would further spread the highly contagious virus.
Proponents of the ban argue it is necessary since the pandemic is still a threat and so many people are at risk of eviction or foreclosure. Nearly 4 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction or foreclosure in the next two months, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
The eviction moratorium “protects many renters who cannot make their monthly payments due to job loss or health care expenses,” Brian M. Boynton, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement announcing the department’s decision to appeal the court ruling.
“Scientific evidence shows that evictions exacerbate the spread of COVID-19, which has already killed more than half a million Americans, and the harm to the public that would result from unchecked evictions cannot be undone,” he added.
[Financial crisis more dire than ever for Charlotte families facing eviction]
Congress has allocated more than $45 billion in rental assistance, but much of that hasn’t reached needy tenants.
Eric Dunn, the director of litigation for the National Housing Law Project, said most of the rent relief programs only started in late March and early April. “It feels like the pandemic, at least in the U.S., is coming to an end but it’s not over yet. If we have a wave of mass evictions, it could really set us back.”
The ruling Wednesday is just the latest court decision on the moratorium.
