President Biden loses bid to keep ban on evictions during the pandemic

THE Supreme Court’s conservative majority is allowing evictions to resume across the United States, blocking Joe Biden’s administration from enforcing a temporary ban that was put in place because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The court’s action ends protections for roughly 3.5 million people in the country who, according to Census Bureau data from early August, could face eviction in the next two months,

The court said in an unsigned opinion that the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which reimposed the moratorium on August 3, lacked the authority to do so under federal law without explicit congressional authorisation.

The justices rejected the administration’s arguments in support of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) authority. “If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorise it,” the court wrote.

The three liberal justices dissented. Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the three, pointed to the increase in Covid-19 caused by the delta variant as one of the reasons the court should have left the moratorium in place.

Mr Breyer wrote: “The public interest strongly favours respecting the CDC’S judgment at this moment, when over 90 per cent of counties are experiencing high transmission rates.”

It was the second loss for the administration this week at the hands of the high court’s conservative majority. On Tuesday, the court effectively allowed the reinstatement of a former president Donald Trump-era policy forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their hearings.

The new administration had tried to end the Remain in Mexico programme, as it is informally known.