When District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich heard a challenge to the CDC’s new moratorium on evictions, I warned that the hearing didn’t go well for landlords or the US Constitution, see Federal Judge Signals She Will Allow CDC’s Illegal Eviction Moratorium Stay in Place. A little earlier today, Judge Friedrich made her ruling, and, as expected, it left the CDC action in place.

A federal judge on Friday allowed the Biden administration’s new eviction moratorium to remain in place, saying she didn’t have authority to block it despite her misgivings about the ban’s legality.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich in Washington said she was bound by a previous ruling from the appeals court above her that said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention likely possessed the authority to impose an eviction ban in the name of public health.

Judge Friedrich in May ruled the previous version of the moratorium was unlawful because it exceeded the CDC’s powers, but that ruling never went into effect while litigation continued. In her Friday decision, she suggested the new ban suffered from the same legal problems. “But the court’s hands are tied,” she wrote in a 13-page opinion.

Alabama Association of Realtors vs. HHS

Judge Friedrich opined that she thought the CDC order was unlikely to survive the challenge, she was powerless to act because her Circuit had voted to uphold the moratorium. She called out Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s gutlessness, saying that there was no evidence the four liberals he voted with to sustain the eviction moratorium agreed with his assessment, and because of that, his opinion was basically as worthless as his opinion.

A group of property managers and realtors lodged legal objections to the new ban the day after it was imposed. On Friday, they pledged to quickly appeal.

“We now plan to return in short order to the D.C. Circuit Court and then again to the Supreme Court if necessary,” said a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors, which helped fund the legal challenge. “We are confident in our position that this unlawful eviction ban will soon come to an end.”

Good luck with that.

This moratorium is scheduled to expire in October. The appeal will probably not get past the DC Circuit in that time because they have no interest in expediting a case in which the Supreme Court will probably reverse their ruling. A challenge may appear in a more favorable circuit, but the challenge of getting it before the Supreme Court before the moratorium ends is slim. Then Biden’s CDC will wait for the cases to be declared moot and issue another moratorium.

In short, the proven tactic of issuing orders of relatively short duration that end before effective challenges can be made to them has made the judiciary’s ability to defend basic civil liberties a joke.

You can’t really blame the Democrats for doing this. They are all about power. They have no respect for the law or customs or traditions or the Constitution beyond any momentary advantage that may accrue them from mouthing pleasing words of respect. There is one man to blame for this. His name is Brett Kavanaugh. He had the duty to strike down the unconstitutional eviction moratorium. He didn’t. He had to play the role of the wise and empathetic judge, and he got punked by the left. The big question is if he or any other conservative jurist have learned anything from this experience.