Judge orders Biden administration to respond to lawsuit against CDC's new eviction ban by Friday NEWS

  • by:
  • Source: The Blaze
  • 08/05/2021
A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered the Biden administration to respond to a lawsuit from a coalition of housing groups challenging a new eviction moratorium enacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich gave the Department of Justice a 9 a.m. ET deadline on Friday to respond to an emergency legal challenge filed by the Alabama Association of Realtors late Wednesday, Reuters reports. The emergency motion accuses the CDC of issuing the new ban on evictions "for nakedly political reasons — to ease the political pressure, shift the blame to the courts for ending the moratorium, and use litigation delays to achieve a policy objective."

"[T]he CDC caved to the political pressure by extending the moratorium, without providing any legal basis," the motion says. "In substance and effect, the CDC's latest action is an extension of the same unlawful ban on evictions that has been in effect since September 2020."

In March 2020, Congress passed the CARES Act, a coronavirus relief bill that created a 120-day ban on evictions that applied to rental properties receiving federal assistance. At the end of that period, the Trump administration Department of Health and Human Services issued a second eviction moratorium through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that unlike the CARES Act applied to all rental properties nationwide. President Joe Biden renewed that order several times and the realtor groups challenged it in court.