By Hellen Zaboulani
A group of landlords, whose lawsuit against New York’s 2019 rent laws was dismissed earlier this year, is moving to appeal the case. As reported by Crain’s NY, one of the group’s lawyers said he thinks the case could end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. “Our estimation is that this case has a good chance at winding up in the Supreme Court,” said Todd Rose, who represents the landlords. The landlords plan to file their appeal in the next two to three weeks, said Brian Barnes, another attorney handling the case. The case will be sent to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Barnes said he felt optimistic.
In February 2020, a group of five large New York landlords filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The suit filed against the city, its Rent Guidelines Board and RuthAnne Visnauskas, commissioner of the state Homes and Community Renewal agency, said that the state’s 2019 rent reforms are unconstitutional. The landlords’ case said that the reforms make it too difficult for them to turn a profit, use their properties per their will, or even exit the market.
In a March 8 decision, Judge Edgardo Ramos had ruled against the landlords, noting that various forms of rent regulation have existed in NYC for over 70 years. The landlords “knowingly entered a highly regulated industry” and can’t now say that the rules “interfered with their reasonable investment-backed expectations,” the judge wrote.
As per Crain’s, Barnes argues that the 2019 changes go too far. “It’s true that rent control laws have been challenged in the past, and they’ve generally been upheld, but in terms of the economic impact of this law, it just goes much further than any law that any court has considered before,” Barnes said. “This is the most extreme version of rent control that has ever been challenged, to my knowledge, and that gives us reason to think that other precedents—the precedents that the district court relied on—aren’t likely to carry the day.” The updated rent-regulated apartment laws make it harder to convert to co-ops or condos, limit the funds that could be spent on renovations, and prohibit landlords from rejecting tenants because of past issues with other landlords, to name a few.
There was also a federal lawsuit against the 2019 rent laws filed by the Rent Stabilization Association and Community Housing Improvement Program. It was similarly dismissed in September, and will also be appealed in the Second Circuit court.
