Appeals Court Revives Lawsuit Against CDC’s Eviction Moratorium

A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit against the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) monthslong eviction moratorium, ruling that a lower court wrongly threw out the case.

A portion of the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, known as the takings clause, states that “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

” “The CDC order constitutes a compensable taking of Plaintiffs’ property and property rights without just compensation,” the owners said in their suit. “The CDC lacked the requisite congressional authority to issue the nationwide residential eviction moratorium at the heart of this case,” Bonilla said. The appeals court, though, said that the CDC “was acting within the normal scope of its duties” when it issued the moratorium, which halted evictions from Sept.

4, 2020, through mid-2021. One federal statute, for instance, confers the CDC and its director the power to “to make and enforce such regulations as in [its] judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases ..

. from one state or possession into any other state or possession,” and the CDC cited that law, the Public Health Service Act (PHSA), in its order. “On the whole, the circumstances here indicate that the CDC issued the order in a good-faith attempt to prevent interstate spread of COVID-19, based on a good-faith interpretation of its authority under the PHSA.

This suffi.