HOUSTON, Texas. – John Barker, federal judge of Texas, declared unconstitutional the moratorium on eviction, issued by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC, for its acronym in English) due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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The judge’s statement was issued this Thursday and said he hoped that the CDC they will respect said decision and withdraw the moratorium. Despite the fact that the pandemic has not ended and is still in force, the magistrate said that “so does the Constitution.”
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Declaring this measure unconstitutional comes after a lawsuit filed by a group of Texas homeowners who in 2020 sued the CDC and the Department of Health and Human Services for suspending the temporary evictions.
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The plaintiffs claimed that the federal government did not have the power to suspend these evictions despite the coronavirus. Barker wrote in his ruling that such a measure had not been implemented in either the Spanish flu pandemic or the Great Depression.
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In addition, the judge assured that Congress also did not have the right to empower the CDC to implement this moratorium on evictions.
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The moratorium expired in December 2020 but was extended to January. With the arrival of the Biden administration, one of the first orders was to try to extend it until March.
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