Columbus, OH – On Tuesday, The Buckeye Institute and Professor Richard A. Epstein jointly filed an amicus brief in 74 Pinehurst v. New York City, calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to hear this case and protect property owners from unconstitutional government “regulatory takings” that are imposed through rent-control schemes.

“A perennial candidate infamously lamented that rent in New York was ‘too damn high.’ He was right. Rent control laws violate the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause and limit housing stock, which causes market distortions,” said Robert Alt, president the chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute. “Rent control laws, in the Gotham vernacular, are a racket.”

“I have worked on takings issue for virtually my entire professional life and am saddened by the abject judicial confusions that have allowed the Second Circuit to sustain New York’s latest and most restrictive rent control law in an opinion that ignores all the powerful constitutional, economic, and historical arguments against this long-running institutional failure,” said Professor Richard A. Epstein, the brief’s coauthor, inaugural Laurence A. Tisch professor of law at NYU Law School, a senior lecturer at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall distinguished service professor emeritus of law and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. “The decision in 74 Pinehurst offers the Supreme Court the ideal vehicle to correct against this massive failure in social experimentation.”

The Buckeye Institute and Professor Epstein argue that there is no principled difference between a physical government taking and a regulatory government taking here, and that rent control laws hurt the very people they are meant to help, incentivize corruption, and harm smaller landlords.

“If the pandemic taught us anything, it is to be mindful of emergency powers abuses. Enter this case about rent control—a policy originally offered as an emergency solution to World War I and World War II, which the government inexplicably continues to enforce today,” continued Alt. “It is far past time to rein in this abuse of power, and the Supreme Court can do that with this case.”

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UPDATE: On February 20, 2024, The U.S. Supreme Court denied cert in 74 Pinehurst v. New York City.