Political | Process

The ruling temporarily lifts part of New York’s policy, which had precluded landlords from challenging a tenant’s self-certified claim of financial hardship.

• The application, filed by a group of five New York property owners and a landlords’ association, was submitted to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who handles emergency matters arising from New York and who referred the matter to the rest of the justices. Breyer, in a five-page dissenting opinion, noted that the challenged New York law is set to expire in less than three weeks, that the Empire State is distributing more than $2 billion in rental aid to cash-strapped renters and that the property owners had been rebuffed in the lower courts.

• “Under these circumstances, such drastic relief would only be appropriate if ‘the legal rights at issue [we]re indisputably clear and, even then, sparingly and only in the most critical and exigent circumstances.’ … I conclude that this strict standard is not met here,” Breyer wrote.

• “The legislature does not enjoy unlimited discretion in formulating that response,” he continued, “but in this case I would not second-guess politically accountable officials’ determination of how best to ‘guard and protect’ the people of New York.”

SOURCE: THEHILL