Alameda County has filed its answering brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and is asking the court to uphold dismissal of the California Apartment Association’s challenge to the county’s COVID-19 eviction moratorium.

In its filing, the county describes the moratorium as a temporary and measured pandemic response. The ordinance, though, went much further.

For more than three years, the county broadly barred evictions for nonpayment of rent – for all renters, not just those with COVID hardships – and permanently eliminated eviction as a remedy for rent debt accrued during the covered period. While tenants remained legally liable on paper, housing providers were stripped of their most important enforcement tool: the right to regain possession of their property.

CAA’s appeal presents a focused constitutional question: May the government eliminate, for years at a time, a landlord’s right to recover possession for nonpayment of rent without paying just compensation?

The county responds by dramatically expanding the stakes. It warns that if CAA’s position is accepted, “wide swaths of regulation, including rent control, minimum wage laws, and public accommodation laws,” could be subject to scrutiny under the Takings Clause.

That sweeping prediction reframes a narrow constitutional issue as a threat to entire regulatory systems, despite the case not challenging rent control or wage laws. Rather, the case asks whether the Constitution imposes meaningful limits when the government requires property owners to continue housing nonpaying tenants and permanently removes eviction as a remedy.

CAA’s reply brief is due next month, with oral argument expected later this year.

The association contends the Ninth Circuit’s decision will determine whether property rights remain a meaningful constitutional protection, or whether governments can require housing providers to absorb the costs of public policy without compensation.