Supreme Court turns down claim from L.A. landlords over COVID evictions ban
Washington – With two conservatives in dissent, the Supreme Court rejected on Monday a request for real estate rights from the owners of Los Angeles who say they have lost millions of unpaid rents during the Pandemic COVVI-19.
Without comments, the judges said that they would not intend to call a coalition of owners of apartments who declared to rent “more than 4,800 units” in “luxury apartments” to “mainly high income tenants”.
They continued the city in search of $ 20 million in damages to tenants who did not pay their rent during the COVVI-19 pandemic.
They argued that the strict limits of the city on the expulsions during this period had the effect of taking their private property in violation of the Constitution.
In the past, the court has repeatedly refused allegations according to which the laws on the control of rents are unconstitutional, even if they limit the quantity of owners can perceive in the rent.
But the owners of Los Angeles said that their complaint was different because the city had actually used their property, at least for a while. They quoted the clause of the 5th amendment which says “a private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation. »»
“In March 2020, the city of Los Angeles adopted one of the country’s most expensive expulsion moratories, stripping the owners … from their right to exclude non-paying tenants,” they told GHP Management Corporation against Los Angeles. “The city supported private property in the public service, imposing the cost of its response to the coronavirus on housing suppliers.”
“In August 2021, when [they] Pursued the city in search of remuneration for this physical taking, the rent rents due by their inomination tenants had reached more than $ 20 million, “they wrote.
A federal judge in Los Angeles and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 3-0 decision rejected the prosecution of the owners. These judges cited the decades of previous preceding which allowed the regulation of goods.
The court has examined the appeal since February, but only judges Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch voted to hear the case of GHP Management Corp. Against the city of Los Angeles.
“I would give the examination of the question of whether a policy prohibiting owners from expelling tenants for the non-payment of rents affects physical taking under the taking clause,” said Thomas. “This case meets all our usual criteria. … The court nevertheless denies the Certiorari, leaving in place a confusion on an important question and leaving the petitioners without having the possibility of obtaining the relief to which they are probably entitled. “
The owners of Los Angeles asked the court to decide “if an expulsion moratorium depriving the landowners of the fundamental right to exclude non -paying tenants affects physical taking.”
In February, the city prosecutor’s office urged the court to refuse the appeal.
“As a single pandemic in a century, has closed its activities and schools, the city of Los Angeles has used temporary emergency measures to protect residential tenants against expulsion,” they wrote. The measure only protected those who could “prove economic difficulties linked to the cocoan-19”, and it “excuses no rent debt that an affected tenant has accumulated”.
The city argued that the owners sought a “radical departure from the previous ones” in the field of property regulation.
“If a government takes goods, he must pay for this,” said city lawyers. “For more than a century, however, this court recognized that governments do not appropriate property rights only because of their regulations.”
The city said that the emergency coche and the restriction of expulsions ended in January 2023.
In response, the owners’ lawyers said that prohibitions on expulsions are becoming the “new standard”. They cited a measure of the County of Los Angeles which, according to them, “would prevent evictions for unpaid tenants allegedly affected by recent forest fires”.
