More articles will likely come on this story. At the time of this posting, a second article is at https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-suprem ... 024-02-20/
https://therealdeal.com/new-york/2024/0 ... rol-cases/
Supreme Court rejects last two rent law challenges
Landlord hopes dashed again by high court
By Kathryn Brenzel
FEB 20, 2024, 10:38 AM
For landlords challenging New York’s rent law, the second and third times were not the charm.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected two more petitions to review the state’s rent stabilization law, a decision that comes more than four months after the court declined to consider a challenge brought by the Rent Stabilization Association and Community Housing Improvement Program.
This decision, however, may leave the door open for a future case.
“The petitioners’ complaints primarily contain generalized allegations about their circumstances and injuries,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the court’s denial. “But, to evaluate their as-applied challenges, we must consider whether specific New York City regulations prevent petitioners from evicting actual tenants for particular reasons.”
In this challenge, they do not, Thomas explained.
But he added, “However, in an appropriate future case, we should grant certiorari to address this important question.”
After the Supreme Court snubbed the RSA and CHIP case, the court repeatedly conferenced the remaining cases, giving some hope that the challenges would be picked up. Tuesday’s decision is yet another blow to landlords, as owners of rental multifamily properties increasingly struggle to pay off debt and in some cases face foreclosure.
One of the cases rejected by the court Tuesday was filed by the Panagoulias family, which bought a 10-unit building in Long Island City after immigrating to New York from Greece in 1974. Their suit claimed that changes to the rent law in 2019 transfers “core property rights” to their tenants.
The family’s complaint alleges the value of their rent-stabilized buildings and others dropped 20 percent to 40 percent because of the 2019 legislation. The petition argues the new requirements that tenants and their successor must be offered lease renewals in most cases “strips owners of their right to exclude others from their property and prevents them from living in their own apartments.”
Under the law, owners are relegated “to caretakers of housing conscripted into the service of an off-budget public-assistance program,” the petition claims.
The second case, brought by a group of landlords that include the Nagin family’s Superior Management, also contends that the state’s 2019 rent law violates the U.S. Constitution’s takings clause.
The landlords filed the lawsuit citing “an accelerating decline in revenues, an inability to recoup expenses, and an indefinite inability to exit” rent stabilization, according to the petition.
The Second Circuit had dismissed the landlords’ confiscatory takings claims — allegations that the owners are forced to rent apartments at a rate that bars a “just and reasonable return.” The owners appealed to the high court, calling the ruling “cavalier.”
But the Supreme Court might only take 75 cases out of the 1,500 or so that land on its doorstep each year. Still, owners of rent stabilization had been cautiously optimistic, given the court’s conservative turn thanks to President Donald Trump’s three appointments.
The two cases took a narrower approach than RSA and CHIP’s petition. Some viewed the Supreme Court’s decision not to reject the Panagoulias and Nagin cases when it nixed the initial one as a sign that one or both of the families’ cases would be taken up by the court, despite the ostensible 2 percent chance.
After the landlord groups’ lawsuit died, Jay Martin, CHIP’s executive director, said his organization will shift its focus to getting legislative relief from the rent law. But lawmakers have not shown much appetite for rolling back any of the 2019 changes, which severely limited rent increases for stabilized apartments and owners’ ability to remove units from regulation.
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See the original denial (PDF) at
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/cou ... r_7647.pdf -- pages 20-21
Cite as: 601 U. S. ____ (2024)
1 Statement of THOMAS, J.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
22–1130
74 PINEHURST LLC, ET AL. v. NEW YORK, ET AL.
22–1170
335–7 LLC, ET AL. v. CITY OF NEW YORK, NEW YORK, ET AL.
Nos. 22–1130 and 22–1170.
ON PETITIONS FOR WRITS OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES
COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
Decided February 20, 2024
The petitions for writs of certiorari are denied.
Statement of JUSTICE THOMAS respecting the denials of certiorari.
Petitioners are owners of small and midsize apartment buildings who challenge New York City’s rent stabilization laws. Among other things, they argue that New York City’s regulations grant tenants and their successors an indefinite, infinitely renewable lease terminable only for reasons outside of the landlord’s control. Petitioners argue that they have suffered a per se taking as a result. The constitutionality of regimes like New York City’s is an important and pressing question. There are roughly one million rental apartments affected in New York City alone. See Pet. for Cert. in No. 22–1130, p. 1; Brief in Opposition for City of New York et al. in No. 22–1130, p. 4. And, the Courts of Appeals have taken different approaches: The Second Circuit rejected petitioners’ takings claims at the pleading stage, but at least one other Court of Appeals has accepted similar claims. Compare 59 F. 4th 557 (CA2 2023) (case below), with Heights Apartments, LLC v. Walz, 30 F. 4th 720 (CA8 2022).
The pleadings in these petitioners’ cases, however, would complicate our review. The petitioners’ complaints primarily contain generalized allegations about their circumstances and injuries. But, to evaluate their as-applied challenges, we must consider whether specific New York City regulations prevent petitioners from evicting actual tenants for particular reasons. Similarly, petitioners’ facial challenges require a clear understanding of how New York City regulations coordinate to completely bar landlords from evicting tenants. The pleadings do not facilitate such an understanding. However, in an appropriate future case, we should grant certiorari to address this important question.