The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge Monday to an Oakland ordinance requiring property owners who evict tenants at the end of a lease to pay their relocation expenses.
The 2018 law is similar to ordinances in San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles. When renters are being evicted through no fault of their own — for example, when the owner decides to move in or convert the property to a condominium — they must be compensated for costs of finding and moving into a new home. The payments are based on the size of the unit and other factors such as the renters’ family size, age and income.
The ordinance was challenged by property-rights advocates on behalf of Lyndsey and Sharon Ballinger, an Air Force couple who leased their home to another family during an assignment on the East Coast, then retook the property when they were reassigned to Oakland in 2018. After paying the family $6,582 in relocation costs, the Ballingers sued the city, saying they were being penalized for exercising the right to regain their property.
But a federal judge and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Oakland was not confiscating the Ballingers’ property but merely regulating the owners’ use of their land, just as a city can limit the rents owners can charge.
“The Ballingers voluntarily chose to lease their property and to ‘evict’ under the ordinance — conduct that required them to pay the relocation fee,” Judge Ryan Nelson, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said in the Ninth Circuit’s 3-0 ruling Feb. 1.
He said the Supreme Court has upheld the government’s authority to impose property-related fees, such as property taxes, and fees related to an owner’s use of the property, like the costs of cleaning up hazardous wastes.
In an appeal to the Supreme Court, the couple’s lawyer, J. David Breemer of the Pacific Legal Foundation, argued that the ordinance “requires a property owner to cede property (the relocation costs) prior to engaging in a traditional use of property, such as the right to occupy one’s home.”
The San Francisco Apartment Association and the Small Property Institute of San Francisco also urged the court to take up the case. So did the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a conservative organization whose founder, John Eastman, represented Trump in attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“The Constitution protects the right to use property. That right includes the right to exclude others. And can’t be conditioned on payment,” the institute said in a brief signed by Eastman and attorney Anthony Caso.
On Monday, the court denied review of the case, without comment or any indication of a dissenting vote.
Breemer said the Ballingers were disappointed but remained confident that the court, in a future case, “will ultimately agree that rental owners are entitled to real constitutional protection when government requires them to pay off tenants before moving back into their own home.”
City Attorney Barbara Parker said in a statement that “the modest relocation assistance landlords must provide to tenants who are displaced, by no fault of their own, in an owner move-in eviction, provides critical support for those facing unanticipated moving expenses and other relocation costs” and can enable them to avoid homelessness.
The case is Ballinger v. Oakland, 21-1181.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @BobEgelko