Louisiana landlords have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn a moratorium on some rental evictions ordered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to avoid spreading the novel coronavirus.
“The CDC’s eviction moratorium represents a sweeping assumption of power by an administrative agency that it simply does not possess,” read the suit filed in Monroe, the location of a company that manages 725 rental units in several northeast Louisiana cities.
Landlords in Georgia, Ohio and Tennessee have filed similar lawsuits against the CDC moratorium, and those in 13 other states and the District of Columbia are trying to overturn state or city eviction moratoriums, according to information assembled by John Pollock at the National Coalition for the Civil Right to Counsel and provided by the Seattle-based Housing Justice Project.
The Pacific Legal Foundation filed the Louisiana challenge for Chambless Enterprises LLC of Monroe and the statewide Apartment Association of Louisiana, with 376 members who own or manage 118,000 apartments.
The CDC’s Sept. 1 order came about three weeks after President Donald Trump issued an executive order telling federal health officials to consider measures to temporarily halt evictions.
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