The right way to deal with this issue is via the lawmaking process. If they want to extend the moratorium, they can do it at anytime, they just have to go through the process.
> On Thursday, the White House confirmed it would let the moratorium expire because the supreme court said it would block additional extensions unless they were authorized by Congress.
The Supreme Court did vote 5-4 to leave the moratorium in place, but this NPR article provides more context:
> Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who cast the fifth and deciding vote, wrote in a concurring opinion that he voted not to end the eviction program only because it is set to expire on July 31, "and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution" of the funds that Congress appropriated to provide rental assistance to those in need due to the pandemic. He added, however, that in his view Congress would have to pass new and clearer legislation to extend the moratorium past July 31
(https://www.npr.org/2021/06/29/1003268497/the-supreme-court-...)
It sounds like the Supreme Court would block any renewed attempt to ban evictions, unless Congress was behind the attempt.
I'm threading the needle here, but that's what SCOTUS does.
This is not rocket science. The question is not, "Did the CDC do the right thing?" or "Did the CDC have the right to do this thing?" but rather, "How long should the CDC be able to impose an emergency mandate like this before we insist on a more democratic approach?"
The CDC should not have the authority to appropriate property, not for a month, not for a minute.
The CDC does not have the ability to pay everyone's rent. If we could have relied on state governments or Congress to bail out rent for people who were unable to make rent otherwise, maybe the moratorium would not have been necessary. Unfortunately, that is not even remotely something we can rely on -- we have spent over a year arguing about whether the "relief" checks, which would not even cover rent in many cities, are too generous.
Emergency powers are not a problem -- in an emergency there is no time for political parties to work out some kind of deal or for judges to review facts / legal arguments, and we allow certain government agencies to take emergency actions in such situations. Look at how long it took for the courts to overrule the CDC; if that is how long it took to react to emergencies we would be at the mercy of every fire, disease outbreak, hurricane, etc. The only relevant question to protecting democracy is, "How long should an emergency order remain in effect before the legislature or judiciary gets involved?"
For every time there is a functioning court override, there are ten post-9/11 border zone 4a exclusions that never get restored.
Anyone who lived through September 11th in the USA and isn't scared of emergency powers isn't paying attention. The CIA's torture prisons are still operating, for example.
We have boundaries in law for a reason, even in emergencies.
We literally watched state and local government scale back their own application of emergency powers (in response to COVID) over the past few weeks.
I lived through 9/11 -- in fact I was in Lower Manhattan that very morning. I know all about the abuses of power that followed, but the fact is that many of those abuses were voted on by Congress and some have been renewed with one vote after another. It is a complete red herring.
The level of distrust in the government these days goes well beyond what the founders had in mind -- as evidenced by the fact that they created a government with an Executive, and gave the Executive powers that can clearly be executed without first consulting Congress or the Courts.
I am pretty sure that the maximum level of distrust of government the founders had in mind included powder and musket ball.
We're nowhere there yet.
See how the ICC has been stretched beyond all reason to grant federal powers.
Keep in mind, the Bill of Rights was written during the tail end of the smallpox pandemic which had a 30% mortality rate.
The clear separation and limits on government powers were considered to be a higher priority.
In the early days of the country we had plenty of exercises of emergency powers. It was common for large numbers of buildings to be demolished in an attempt to prevent fires from spreading across cities, and nobody waited for a judge to rule on the acceptability and compensation requirements of such actions. There was never any doubt that if a foreign army was invading the President could immediately order the US army and state militias to respond, without waiting for Congress to vote on a declaration of war.
It is also worth remembering that when the constitution was drafted the prevailing theory of disease was the "miasma theory," and only a rudimentary understanding of disease containment that included some vague concepts of quarantine. Disease outbreaks would routinely create ghost towns all over the country. I have no doubt that the framers of constitution, had they understood disease as we understand it today, would have had no problem whatsoever with the CDC's emergency powers and would have focused on how Congress could regulate those emergency actions (as they did with the military).
However, the Supreme Court decided to punt and leave the moratorium in place since it is set to expire at the end of the month (https://www.npr.org/2021/06/29/1003268497/the-supreme-court-...) but warned that further extensions would need to go through Congress.
It's not like the CDC uses these rules all the time.
Others as well, including the sixth circuit. From https://reason.com/2021/07/26/federal-appeals-court-sneaks-i...:
> "The Sixth Circuit's ruling represents the sixth time a lower court has struck down the CDC's moratorium, with most decisions similarly criticizing the near-limitless powers the agency was trying to claim for itself."
It’s less clear cut than your suggesting. The Supreme Court left the memorandum in place 5-4 while saying they would reject continuing it without congressional involvement. So, it looks like the CDC could do this on the next pandemic, just not for this one.
It’s a tough balancing act because retroactively judging their response to COVID is one thing, but nobody wants to tie their hands of a vastly worse disease shows up. Biologically a disease could be airborne and more infectious with a 20+% case fatality rate and a 1 month incubation period. At which point just about anything is on the table.