Tweet A federal judge in Washington, DC has determined that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had no authority to implement a nationwide eviction moratorium. The full 20-page decision was posted here by CNN. But the conclusion is simply that the CDC shouldn’t have done this. The Court recognizes that the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious public health crisis that has presented unprecedented challenges for public health officials and the nation as a whole. The pandemic has triggered difficult policy decisions that have had enormous real-world consequences. The nationwide eviction moratorium is one such decision. It is the role of the political branches, and not the courts, to assess the merits of policy measures designed to combat the spread of disease, even during a global pandemic. The question for the Court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not.