The Legal Aid Society filed this amicus brief on behalf of tenants’ rights groups Housing Court Answers, Mount Vernon United Tenants, City-Wide Tenant Union of Rochester, and United Tenants of Albany, in support of an administrative order issued by Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence K. Marks to limit summary eviction proceedings. The petitioners in the case were landlords who sought to evict tenants during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We argued that Judge Marks's order was both legal and necessary. Rather than altering any substantive rights or contravening the intent of the legislature, it properly balanced the need for housing courts to resume operations with the need to protect the public health and due process, and it protected thousands of low-income tenants, who would otherwise have had to descend upon housing courts seeking orders to show cause to stop their imminent evictions. On October 14, 2020, the Supreme Court, Westchester County dismissed the landlords’ claims and left the order intact.