Judge puts hold on ruling voiding U.S. moratorium on evicting renters.

A federal judge on Wednesday threw out the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's nationwide moratorium on evictions but agreed to put a temporary hold on her ruling as the government seeks to reverse the decision on appeal.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich said that although there was "no doubt" Congress intended to empower the CDC to combat COVID-19 through a range of measures such as quarantines, a moratorium on residential evictions was not among them. The rulingwas a setback for millions of Americans who have fallen behind on rent payments during the pandemic.

The Justice Department sought an emergency order to put Friedrichs's decision on hold, arguing "evictions exacerbate the spread of COVID-19, which has already killed more than half a million Americans, and the harm to the public that would result from unchecked evictions cannot be undone."

Friedrich agreed to temporarily put her ruling on hold and gave the landlord groups that challenged the moratorium until May 12 to file legal papers opposing the delay. She emphasized she had not ruled on the merits of the government's request.

Friedrich's order gives the Justice Department four days to respond after the landlord groups' file legal papers.

Friedrich cited the "plain language" of a law called the Public Health Service Act, which governs the federal response to the spread of communicable diseases, even while acknowledging that the pandemic is "a serious public health crisis that has presented unprecedented challenges for public health officials and the nation."

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/federal-court-vacates-us-eviction-moratorium-2021-05-05/

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