LSNYC Helps Defend NYC’s Rent Stabilization System Against Landlord Attacks

Legal Services NYC, Legal Aid Society, and Selendy Gay successfully defended New York’s rent stabilization laws against landlord attacks. Landlord groups sued the city, arguing that recent laws to strengthen the rent stabilization system were unconstitutional. Those new laws were designed to close loopholes that previously allowed landlords to raise rents and push tenants out, as well as other practices that harmed tenants.

LSNYC intervened along with partner groups on behalf of three tenants’ rights organizations (Tenants and Neighbors, Community Voices Heard, and Coalition for the Homeless) and successfully petitioned the District Court to dismiss the lawsuit. Landlords appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately declined to hear the cases. 

The Court’s denial — based on legal arguments from LSNYC advocates developed over years of client-focused litigation —leaves the rent stabilization laws in place, and preserves the rights of more than one million New York City residents living in rent-stabilized apartments. 

“Since 1969, New York’s Rent Stabilization Laws have protected millions of tenants, preserved affordable housing, and prevented mass displacement and homelessness in a city where the rents are the highest in the country and rising. Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court declining to review the Second Circuit’s well-reasoned dismissals of these lawsuits is in line with well-established precedent,” said Legal Services NYC, Legal Aid, and Selendy Gray in a joint statement. 

• Read the press release
• Read CityLimit’s article 

“The U.S. Supreme Court declining to review the Second Circuit’s well-reasoned dismissals of these lawsuits is in line with well-established precedent and puts an end to these cases attacking the legal protections depended upon by a million New York households amid an ongoing housing crisis. ”

Legal Services NYC, Legal Aid Society, and Selendy Gay

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