U.S. Appeals Court Throws Out Landlord Plea To End Eviction Moratorium

An appeals court in Georgia has ruled against a group of landlords seeking a preliminary injunction against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's temporary moratorium on evictions as they failed to prove that the measure imposed amid the coronavirus pandemic will cause them irreparable harm, Darryl Coote reported for United Press International (UPI).

"We fail to see how the temporary inability to reclaim rental properties constitutes an irreparable injury," the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said in their ruling on Wednesday.

The judges ruled 2-1 against the National Apartment Association and several landlords who had requested the court to lift the CDC's measure preventing them from evicting non-paying tenants.

The moratorium was first put in place under the CARES Act at the end of March of last year, which the CDC extended in September, attracting the lawsuit filed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance on behalf of the landlords days later.

The moratorium has been extended several times since, with the White House in June keeping it in place until July 31, saying it was extending the ban "for one final month."

The landlords had been earlier denied the injunction by a district court and had filed an appeal. The CDC's order does not relieve tenants from their rent-paying obligations but only denies the landlords for evicting them while the order is in place.

However, the plaintiffs had sought the injunction on the grounds that the order was unconstitutional, that they were being denied access to their property and that they would never recover the rent owed to them as the tenants were insolvent.

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