It’s clear that the Supreme Court considers the CDC’s eviction moratorium an unconstitutional usurpation of Congress’s powers, and its clear the Biden administration doesn’t give a damn. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:
Below is my column in the Hill on the extension of the eviction moratorium — a move that his White House Counsel and most legal experts told him was unconstitutional. However, according to the Washington Post, Speaker Nancy Pelosi encouraged Biden to call Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe who reportedly advised hm that he had the authority. I have had many (and sharp) disagreements with Tribe over the years (including profane and personal attacks) but there is usually some good-faith underlying disagreement in controversies like impeachment. This is not such a case. I fail to see the credible basis for telling a President that the CDC can use the same authority that five justices just declared it did not have.
Here is the column:
During the 2020 presidential campaign, then-candidate Joe Biden told voters that the choice between him and Donald Trump was between the lawful and the lawless. He called for voters to support “the rule of law, our Constitution,” a choice repeated mantralike by the media to “end Trump’s assault on the rule of law.” Now, six months into his presidency, Biden is openly flouting the Constitution with a knowingly invalid extension of the eviction moratorium — and some law professors and advocates on the left are cheering him for it.
A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled on the authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to impose a nationwide moratorium on the eviction of renters during the pandemic. Some of us criticized the CDC order as unconstitutional. The reason is the breathtaking authority claimed by the CDC under a federal law that gives it the power to “make and enforce such regulations as in [its] judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases.”
I have long been a critic of such unchecked and undefined authority in pandemics. This, however, is a particularly chilling example. It would give the CDC authority over huge swaths of our economy to avoid even the possibility of the “introduction” or spread of a disease. It means that a Constitution designed to prevent tyranny and authoritarianism becomes largely irrelevant if you put on a white lab coat. After all, the law was designed to control disease, not democracy, as a public health priority.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 