Eviction Moratorium: A Perfect Storm of Conservative Bullshit [TEASER]

a victory for landlords and property owners, and it could spell trouble for people who have struggled to pay their rent during the pandemic.

Hey everyone, this isn't Leon from Fiasco and Prologue Projects.

He's on vacation.

This is Rachel.

I produce this show.

On this Patreon-only episode of 5-4, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about the Centers for Disease Control's eviction moratorium.

In an unsigned ruling, the court held that the CDC had exceeded its authority in banning eviction during the pandemic.

Landlords are now free to evict tenants who were previously protected by the moratorium, and the court has handed another victory to the moneyed interests that want the federal government to play effectively no role in governing.

This is 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have flooded our nation with injustice like rainwater in a New York City subway station.

I am Peter.

Nice.

I'm here with Michael.

Hey, everybody.

And Rihanna.

Hey, I'm the rat that's like flipping around and doing swims.

Yeah, that's the world just laps in the subway shit water.

You know, apparently that video is from like the Philippines from months ago.

Okay, I'm still that rat.

No, I don't care.

I feel like it doesn't matter.

Yeah, it's still relevant.

I'm just glad that the rats are enjoying themselves.

Yes.

Some things can be true without being accurate.

Yes.

Yes.

And the rat video is one of those.

Yeah.

The spirit of the swimming rat transcends the temporal reality.

That's right.

That's right.

All right.

Today's case is Alabama Association of Realtors v.

Department of Health and Human Services, better known as the Eviction Moratorium case.

The story of what led us to this point in this this case is long and frustrating.

The Centers for Disease Control are authorized by law to take certain measures to combat disease or control disease, you might say.

There is a statute that outlines the scope of the measures they are allowed to take.

Last year, one of the measures they took was to institute a nationwide eviction moratorium.

That is, they issued an order that forbid the eviction of certain tenants for the non-payment of rent intended to prevent the spread of COVID that would likely result from mass evictions.

The order was challenged by a landlords association claiming that it was beyond the scope of the CDC's authority.

This June, the Supreme Court agreed with the landlords, saying that the moratorium was unlawful, but allowing it to continue through its expiration at the end of July.

After it expired, public pressure mounted on the Biden administration to renew it, and on August 3rd, after some hemming and hawing, they bent to the pressure and issued a new modified moratorium.

But the Supreme Court, in a six to three decision authored anonymously,

struck that moratorium down, claiming that the CDC was exceeding their authority.

This is a case where the court took an awkward technical reading of a law and used it as an excuse to further criminalize poverty and mold government power to match the court's own vision of what government should look like.

There's so much weird conservative shit going on here that it's hard to know where to start.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is why I delegate that to Rhiannon, as always.

Thanks, boss.

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