On Thursday evening, lawyers from Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit in a lawsuit challenging Los Angeles’s COVID-19 eviction moratorium. The case, Apartment Association of Los Angeles County v. City of Los Angeles, raises a Contract Clause challenge to the eviction moratorium on behalf of a coalition of landlords. The brief, filed on behalf of constitutional law scholars from law schools across the country, including Michelle Wilde Anderson, Nikolas Bowie, Erwin Chemerinsky, Leah Litman, Bernadette Meyler, and Laura Weinrib, defends the district court’s denial of a preliminary injunction for the landlords. As the brief argues, the City, far from invading the constitutional rights of landlords, was well within its authority to institute a policy that would keep Angelenos in their homes during the largest global public health crisis in a century.
Raymond Tolentino, Molly Webster, and Thea Raymond-Sidel contributed to the brief, which can be read in full here.