In a 6 to 3 vote the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on eviction moratoriums as being beyond the powers of the Center for Disease Control to enact, holding that such a moratorium, if permissible at all, would have to be enacted by Congress which has declined to do so. The usual suspects — Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented.
As far as we can tell this decision did not use a taking theory as a basis for the ruling even though, it seems to us, that whoever enacts such a moratorium, whether the CDC or Congress, it would be taking the landlords’ property — i.e. the landlords’ right to collect rent on leased real estate, which — if memory serves — is an incorporeal hereditament, one of the “sticks” in the “bundle of rights” that comprise property.
Quoting from SCOTUS blog:
“The decision on the eviction moratorium was a decisive rebuke for the Biden
administration, with the majority writing that it “strains credulity to believe” that
the public-health law at the center of the case gives the Centers for Disease
Control the power to enact the moratorium. ‘If a federally imposed eviction
moratorium is to continue,’ the court stressed, ‘Congress must specifically
authorize it.’”