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On February 25, 2021, the United States District Court in the Eastern District of Texas (“Texas Court”) granted summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs in
Lauren Terkel et al. v. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention et al.,[1] holding that a nationwide eviction moratorium issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 exceeded the constitutional authority granted to the CDC.
On September 4, 2020, the CDC issued an order, the Temporary Halt in Residential Evictions to Prevent the Further Spread of COVID-19[2] (the “Order”), under Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act, which was originally scheduled to expire on December 31, 2020 and was subsequently extended until March 31, 2021.[3] The Order was intended to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 within shared living spaces and the spread of the virus in between the States. Under the Order, any landlord, owner of a residential property[4] or other person with the legal right to pursue eviction was barred from evicting any “covered person”[5] from a residential property during the term of the Order. Any person who violates such Order is subject to a criminal penalty of up to one year imprisonment followed by one year of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000. Prior to issuance of the Order, the federal government had never previously invoked its commerce power to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium. The Order did not apply to any State, local, territorial or tribal area which had a moratorium on residential evictions in place that provided an equal or greater level of protection than those set forth in the Order. The Order also did not preclude the tenant’s obligation to pay full contractual rent under its lease.