Supreme
Court
Upholds
Zero
Tolerance
in
Public
Housing
--
Officials
Can
Evict
Families
Over
a
Member's
Drug
Use
3/29/02
If anyone ever needed proof that what is legal and what is just are not necessarily identical, one need only look at this week's Supreme Court decision in HUD v. Rucker, the case that pitted poor, elderly public housing tenants against public housing authorities who moved to evict them because of drug use by family members. In a unanimous decision, the Court on Tuesday ruled that public housing authorities may indeed evict tenants for drug use by family members -- even if they did not know about it and even if it occurred outside the property. The case arose out of the 1998 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which, among other things, required public housing agencies to use leases that allow for eviction of tenants if the tenant, tenant's family member, or guest engaged in drug-related crimes. The Oakland Housing Authority enforced the measure with vigor, moving to evict:
The Supreme Court disagreed. "It is not absurd that a local housing authority may sometimes evict a tenant who had no knowledge of drug-related activity," wrote Chief Justice William Rehnquist for the court. In its ruling, the court assiduously avoided the constitutional snares thrown up by the 9th Circuit, instead taking a crabbed view of the case as a lesson in landlord-tenant law. "The government is not attempting to criminally punish or civilly regulate respondants [the tenants] as members of the general populace," wrote Rehnquist. "It is instead acting as the landlord of a property it owns, invoking a clause in a lease" that tenants have signed. There is no constitutional issue, Rehnquist wrote. Civil rights and tenants' organizations had filed briefs in the case to argue that the policy was unjust, resulting in "horror stories" and "draconian enforcement." A brief filed by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School said "a tenant who has only a fleeting connection to the alleged perpetrator of a crime is put at risk because of conduct that only the most paranoid or clairvoyant tenant could possibly have foreseen." Tenant advocates, civil rights groups and drug reformers reacted with horror to the decision. "The war on drugs is being waged most viciously against poor people," the Drug Policy Alliance's Daniel Abrahamson told the New York Times. "Any time the Supreme Court takes a case with drugs in it, it is another opportunity to further erode our civil liberties and constitutional rights." Cornell University law professor Jonathan Macey told the Times the decision "gives legitimacy to the war on drugs." It is "symbolic and morale boosting" for drug warriors, he said. Cardozo School of Law professor Paris Baldacci told the Times the Supreme Court was more concerned with crime than with innocent tenants. "It's that tone, that the court is so caught up in the sort of drug panic that it doesn't step back," he said. "Instead of getting the target who might be causing the reign of terror, this is sweeping up all the people who might have a drug problem." "The only way they can get away with it is because it affects poor people," Sheila Crowley, head of the National Low Income Housing Coalition told the Washington Times. The ruling has opened up both President Bush and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, to jabs from people who recall their family members having drug problems while they occupy public housing (the White House and the governor's mansion). The irony is apparently lost on the Supreme Court.
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