Clarence Thomas Wants Supreme Court to Decide a Case It Doesn’t Have Yet

The Supreme Court declined to take up cases challenging New York City’s rent stabilization law on Tuesday, but Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to hear future cases over the program.

The court denied writs of certiorari for two cases that argued against the rent stabilization program, which guarantees rights to renters living in more than a million units across the city. The law places limits on how much landlords can increase rent and provides tenants a right to renew their lease.

Proponents of this law argue it ensures residents have access to affordable units, particularly as rent in New York and other cities continues to rise and cannot be evicted without cause. Critics, however, argue it is government overreach that impedes the rights of landlords.

The Supreme Court filing describes the law as “the most sweeping and onerous rent control provisions” the United States has ever seen.

The cases asked the court to address three questions—whether the laws are “expropriating Petitioners’ right to exclude,” whether they “effect a confiscatory taking by depriving Petitioners of a just and reasonable return” and if they constituted an “unconstitutional use restriction of Petitioners’ property,” “expropriating Petitioners’ right to exclude.”

Thomas wrote in a filing released Tuesday that while the court would not take up the cases due to how they were brought up, he would like to see the court hear other arguments about rent control if it is raised again in the future.

“The constitutionality of regimes like New York City’s is an important and pressing question. There are roughly one million rental apartments affected in New York City alone,” he wrote.

He noted that the challenge would “require a clear understanding of how New York
City regulations coordinate to completely bar landlords from evicting tenants,” and that previous pleadings “do not facilitate such an understanding.”

“However, in an appropriate future case, we should grant certiorari to address this important question,” he wrote.

Newsweek reached out to New York City Mayor Eric Adams for comment via email.

New York City Councilor Keith Powers described the court’s decision as “good news for rent stabilized tenants in New York” in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Attorney Daniel Suitor noted, however, the ruling is “at best, a temporary reprieve, because conservative justices have pointedly asked for landlords to try again.”

New York’s rent stabilization law was first passed in 1969, and most rent-stabilized units are found in buildings containing six or more units built before 1974. As of 2021, there were at least 1,048,860 rent-stabilized units across the city’s five boroughs, and almost half of all units in the city are stabilized.

A 2021 citywide survey found that the median rent in stabilized units was $1,400 per month, compared to $1,825 in private, unregulated units.