[Mostly White] Landlords in NYC Lose Suit: Covid Eviction Ban Remains in Effect for Mostly Non-White Tenants

From [HERE] Citing a 1905 Supreme Court decision regarding smallpox vaccination, a federal judge held that public health eclipses individuals’ challenges to legislative acts, and denied an attempt from New York landlords to block the state’s eviction ban during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

U.S. District Judge Gary Brown consolidated the landlords’ motion for preliminary injunction with the merits of the case, ruling in favor of defendant Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks and dismissing all other defendants — which included county sheriffs and other court officials — from the case. 

At the top of his ruling, Brown pulled an excerpt from Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a Supreme Court ruling from 1905 that held that requiring smallpox vaccination does not violate the due process rights of an individual.

“Whatever may be thought of the expediency of this statute, it cannot be affirmed to be, beyond question, in palpable conflict with the Constitution. Nor, in view of the methods employed to stamp out the disease of smallpox, can anyone confidently assert that the means prescribed by the state to that end has no real or substantial relation to the protection of the public health and the public safety,” reads the ruling, as quoted by Brown. 

In his 29-page order, Brown tossed out the plaintiffs’ allegations that the eviction moratorium is too vague, and that its requirement of landlords to provide tenants with a financial hardship declaration form constituted compelled speech.