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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court declined a property claim from a Los Angeles landlord on Monday after two conservatives challenged it.
Without comment, the judge said he would not hear an appeal from a coalition of apartment owners who told the “high-end apartment community” to rent “over 4,800 units” to “mainly high-income tenants.”
They sued the city for $20 million in damages from tenants who didn’t pay rent during the Covid-19 pandemic.
They argued that strict restrictions on city evictions during that time had the effect of taking private property in violation of the constitution.
In the past, courts have repeatedly declined to argue that the Rent Control Act is unconstitutional, despite limiting the amount of rent that can be collected from rent.
However, the LA landlord said their claims were different as the city had been using their property effectively for at least a while. They cited the Fifth Amendment, which read “Private Property.” [shall not] It is taken for public use without compensation. ”
“In March 2020, the city of Los Angeles adopted one of the nation’s most troublesome eviction moratorias, stripping property owners… excludes the right to exclude non-paid tenants.” “The city pushed private property into public services and pushed the costs of coronavirus response to housing providers.”
“When will the month of August 2021 be? [they] “They sued the city for compensation for their physical extraction, seeking to recover rents that their irremovable tenants had inflated to more than $20 million,” they wrote.
A federal judge in Los Angeles and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the landlord’s case in a 3-0 ruling. These judges cited decades of precedents that allowed property regulation.
The court had been considering appeals since February, but only judicialists from Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch voted to hear the case of GHP Management Corp. vs. City of Los Angeles.
“I acknowledge the review of the question of whether a policy banning landlords who have evicted tenants due to non-payment of rent affects physical taking under the terms they take,” Thomas said. “This case meets all of our usual standards. … Nevertheless, the court will deny the certificate, cause confusion on important issues and ensure that petitioners do not have the opportunity to obtain relief that they may qualify.”
The Los Angeles landlord asked the court to decide whether “the property owner would take away the property owner who excludes the basic right to exclude non-paid tenants from physical use.”
In February, the City Attorney’s Office urged the court to decline the appeal.
“As the once-a-century pandemic shut down businesses and schools, the city of Los Angeles adopted temporary emergency measures to protect housing rentals from eviction,” they wrote. The measure only protects those who “can prove Covid-19-related financial difficulties” and “did not allow the affected tenants to liability for exempt rent.”
The city argued that landlords are seeking “a fundamental departure from precedent” in the area of property regulation.
“If the government takes the property, it has to pay it,” the city’s lawyer said. “However, for more than a century, this court has recognized that the government has not properly established property rights just to regulate them.”
The city said COVID emergency and eviction restrictions ended in January 2023.
In reply, the landlord’s lawyer said eviction bans are becoming “new normal.” They cited Los Angeles County measures, saying it “prevents eviction of non-payment tenants allegedly affected by the recent wildfires.”
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