Rental property owners in Oakland and elsewhere in Alameda County can't sue the local governments for allegedly trampling their constitutional rights as property owners by keeping in place for three years a Covid-era evictions ban that the landlords said amounted to a two-year "rent holiday" for all tenants, regardless of their ability to pay and long after any real public health emergency had ended, a federal judge has ruled.
On Sept. 3, federal Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler sided with Alameda County and the city of Oakland in the dispute with the owners of apartment buildings and other residential rental properties over the question of whether the county's years-long Covid eviction moratorium amounted to an unconstitutional taking of their property.
The legal challenge landed in federal court in 2022, the result of two lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuits were filed by a collection of residential rental property owners in Alameda County and two landlord trade associations, the Housing Providers of America and the California Apartment Association.
Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker
| City of Oakland
In both lawsuits, the plaintiffs sought the chance to demand compensation from Alameda County and Oakland for nearly three years of orders, which the county said was in response to the Covid pandemic, blocking landlords in Alameda County from evicting tenants, even in instances in which tenants simply refused to pay rent.
In the lawsuits, the property owners noted the eviction bans began amid the lockdown-style responses instituted by the state and local governments at the onset of the declared pandemic in the spring of 2020.
Eviction moratoriums were a common feature of the Covid response, particularly in states and jurisdictions in which Democrats dominated politically. At the time, state and local public health officials asserted temporary eviction bans were needed to slow the spread of the virus by allowing people to remain housed and in place without fear of eviction, even if they had lost their job as a result of business and societal shutdowns, also ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other governors throughout the country.
However, while eviction bans were lifted in 2020 and 2021 in most states and jurisdictions throughout the country along with nearly all other Covid response measures, the Alameda landlords noted in their complaint that Alameda County and Oakland city officials refused to lift or modify the bans.
Further, they said, this refusal to acknowledge the end of the Covid pandemic response by the county was only made worse by the stringent nature of the eviction prohibition. The landlords noted Alameda's eviction ban placed a far greater burden on landlords than elsewhere.
In court filings, they compared the bans in Alameda County and Oakland to one instituted in Los Angeles County. In L.A., despite a general ban on evictions, landlords could still evict people if they simply chose not to pay rent, despite suffering no demonstrated loss of income or other hardship. And landlords in L.A. could still evict tenants who caused damage to the property or other "material breaches of the lease."
In Alameda, however, landlords were barred from taking action against virtually any tenant for virtually every reason.
Further, landlords have been prohibited by the county from evicting any tenants for their actions during the so-called emergency period, even for failure to pay any rent for years.
In court filings, the landlords said the eviction moratorium amounted to essentially a two-year rent holiday for many tenants, even for "wealthy employed individuals who remained able to pay" throughout the ordeal.
In the lawsuits, the landlords said the county's orders amounted to a so-called "regulatory taking," because the county's leaders willfully misused their emergency powers to deprive rental property owners of many millions of dollars of income they were owed by tenants for years.
They asserted this violated their constitutional rights under the Fifth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
In the ruling, however, Beeler rejected the property owners' takings claim entirely, saying they did not show that their property had "lost value" during the pandemic. The judge said she believed Alameda County acted within its lawful authority to issue the eviction ban and keep it in place, even months or years after the emergency that spawned the orders had apparently ended.
The judge said the landlords' takings accusations fail under a so-called "rational basis" standard of judicial review. Under this standard, governments have a much easier road to defeat claims they violated the Constitution, needing only to show there was a "rational basis" behind their decision to deprive someone of their rights.
In this case, Beeler said the county needed only to show that the landlords' rights to collect rent and maintain control of their property fell short compared to governments' need to respond to a pandemic virus.
"The plaintiffs, in arguing for a different result, focus on the length of the moratoria and the notion that it is irrational for landlords (as opposed to another group or the public at large) to bear the burden of nonpaying renters," Beeler wrote. "But these arguments do not overcome rational-basis review in light of the rationality of keeping residential tenants in place during a pandemic.
"The court also is not in a position to second guess the City and County's judgment as to when the emergency ended."
The judge also tossed the landlord trade associations from the case, finding they had no associational standing to sue alongside the property owners.
Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker released a statement saying the ruling backs up the city's view that the property owners' "claims lack merit," according to published reports following the ruling.
The landlords have said they intend to file an amended complaint and attempt to renew their action.
The landlords have been represented in the case by attorneys Andrew M. Zacks and Emily L. Brough, of Zacks & Freedman PC, of Oakland; Jonathan M. Houghton, Brian T. Hodges and Sam Spiegelman, of the Pacific Legal Foundation, of Arlington, Virginia, and Seattle; and Christopher E. Skinnell and Hilary J. Gibson, of Nielsen Merksamer Parrinello Gross & Leoni, of San Rafael.