Alabama Assn. of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Servs.
The Supreme Court lifted a lower court's pause on its own ruling, effectively ending the CDC's nationwide eviction moratorium by making the order against it immediately enforceable.
The decision means that if the federal government wants to keep an eviction moratorium running, Congress — not a health agency — must specifically authorize it.
“Section 361(a) is a wafer-thin reed on which to rest such sweeping power.”
The Court's blunt assessment of the 1944 public health statute the CDC used to justify the nationwide eviction moratorium.
How it got here: A federal trial court vacated the CDC moratorium but stayed its own order pending appeal; the D.C. Circuit twice declined to lift the stay; landlord groups then asked the Supreme Court to vacate the stay.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order barring landlords from evicting certain tenants in counties with high COVID-19 transmission — covering at least 80% of the country and an estimated 6 to 17 million at-risk tenants. The CDC justified the ban using a 1944 public health law whose listed examples of authorized measures are things like fumigation, disinfection, and pest extermination. Realtor associations and rental property managers in Alabama and Georgia sued, and a federal trial court agreed the CDC had overstepped — but paused its own ruling while the government appealed.
The question before the Court
Did the CDC have the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium using a 1944 public health law that authorizes measures like fumigation and pest extermination?
The Court's answer
Yes, the Court ruled — and in doing so it lifted the lower court's pause on its own judgment, making the order against the moratorium immediately enforceable. The CDC relied on a provision of the 1944 Public Health Service Act to justify a nationwide eviction ban. The Court found this a serious stretch: the law's illustrative examples — fumigation, disinfection, pest extermination — all directly target disease, while an eviction ban affects disease spread only indirectly, through a chain of possibilities (evicted tenants might relocate across state lines while infected). The Court also applied the principle that Congress must speak clearly before empowering an agency to act on issues of vast economic and political significance. A moratorium covering 80% of the country, touching an estimated $50 billion in economic impact, and intruding on landlord-tenant law — historically a state-law domain — demanded that kind of clear authorization, which the 1944 statute did not provide.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Millions of tenants who had been shielded from eviction during the COVID-19 Delta variant surge lost that protection immediately. Landlords across the country could resume eviction proceedings. For any future federal eviction moratorium to take effect, Congress itself — not the CDC or any other agency — would have to pass a law specifically allowing it.
What changes now
With the stay lifted, the District Court's judgment vacating the CDC moratorium took immediate effect, ending the federal eviction ban. The government's appeal in the D.C. Circuit continued but was effectively moot as to this moratorium. The Court made clear that any future federal eviction moratorium would require Congress to pass legislation specifically authorizing it — the CDC alone cannot do it.
What this does not decide
The ruling technically resolved an emergency stay application, not a final appeal, though the Court's merits analysis was detailed and strongly telegraphed its view. It does not resolve how §361(a) applies to other, more targeted public health interventions such as quarantines, nor does it address what specific legislation Congress could pass to authorize a future moratorium.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer argued the lower courts did not clearly err — the standard required before this Court overrides a lower court's stay decision. He contended the CDC's authority under §361(a) was genuinely debatable, noting that lower courts had split on the question and the statute's broad first sentence plausibly covers eviction moratoria used historically to contain disease. He stressed that the Delta variant had driven transmission to over 90% of counties, making the balance of equities and the public interest strongly favor keeping the moratorium in place, and argued that consequential legal questions deserved full briefing and argument rather than summary resolution.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the standard four-factor test for deciding whether to lift a lower court's stay: (1) how likely the side seeking the lift is to win on the merits, (2) whether that side suffers serious harm without the lift, (3) whether the other side suffers serious harm if the stay is removed, and (4) where the public interest lies.
- On likelihood of success, the Court read §361(a) of the Public Health Service Act by looking at both its sentences together rather than just the first in isolation. The second sentence's examples — fumigation, disinfection, pest extermination, destruction of contaminated animals — all directly eliminate disease at its source. An eviction ban, by contrast, connects to disease spread only indirectly: some evicted tenants might move across state lines, and some of those might be infected. That is a markedly different kind of measure.
- The Court also invoked the 'major questions' canon — the principle that Congress must speak with unmistakable clarity before it empowers an agency to act on matters of vast economic and political significance. The moratorium covered over 80% of the country, carried criminal penalties of up to $250,000 and one year in jail, and invaded landlord-tenant relations, an area traditionally governed by state law. No regulation premised on §361(a) had ever come close to this scale in the statute's 77-year history, and the government could identify no principled limit on CDC power under its own reading of the law.
- On the equities, the Court found that harm to landlords — lost rent with no guarantee of recovery, and interference with the core property right to exclude — had grown over the months the moratorium had been in place, while the government's interest had shrunk because additional rental-assistance funds had been distributed and Congress had been on notice that it would need to act if it wanted to extend the moratorium.
- On the public interest, the Court acknowledged the importance of fighting the Delta variant but held that federal agencies cannot act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends. The decision about whether a further moratorium serves the public interest belonged to Congress, not the CDC.