BENTON – Granite City council members, facing a constitutional challenge in U.S. district court, repealed an ordinance requiring landlords to evict tenants for having criminal suspects in their homes.
The council acted on July 7, and two days later asked District Judge Staci Yandle to find the proceedings in her court moot.
On July 15, she gave Granite City ten days to file a brief about it.
She gave plaintiffs Deborah Brumit and Andrew Simpson ten days to respond.
Last year, Granite City police told landlord Clayton Baker that a third member of the household with Brumit and Simpson stole a van.
The ordinance gave Baker no choice but to start an eviction proceeding.
Brumit and Simpson sued the city in October, to stop the eviction and collect nominal damages.
Yandle granted a temporary order enjoining the eviction and prohibiting any action against Baker.
“There can be no adequate remedy at law for the loss of a home, particularly in this instance where plaintiffs are living paycheck to paycheck and caring for their two minor grandchildren ages three years and 18 months old,” she wrote.
“Plaintiffs are poor and do not have the resources to immediately rent another property.”
Brumit and Simpson reached agreement with Granite City to convert the temporary order into a preliminary injunction.
The city moved to dismiss the suit, claiming plaintiffs and the third household member all signed and agreed that if any of them committed a felony in the city, all of them would be subject to eviction.
City council members yielded ground in December, amending the ordinance so it would apply only to crimes on the premises of a rental property.
Granite City counsel Bradley Young of Wood River notified Yandle and moved to dismiss the suit as moot.
He wrote that Brumit and Simpson were no longer subject to eviction and Baker was no longer subject to fines or loss of license.
On behalf of Brumit and Simpson, Samuel Gedge of the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Virginia, disagreed.
He wrote that the amendment wasn’t retroactive.
“In fact, it still mandates evictions for innocent people,” Gedge wrote.
He wrote that the city’s actions were a bid to manipulate the court’s jurisdiction.
“Plaintiffs seek not only injunctive relief but also nominal damages. They have a right to proceed on that ground too,” he wrote.
At a hearing on mootness in February, Gedge called Granite City’s position a kind of informal assurance that wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
“Plaintiffs have asserted from day one that Granite City cannot constitutionally expose them to eviction based on crimes they have not committed and that they had neither legal duty nor authority to prevent,” he said.
He said the amended ordinance threatened the same harm as the previous version.
Yandle said, “There are potential constitutional questions that remain even after the amendment of the ordinance.”
She told Gedge the question was whether his clients had sufficient standing to champion that cause.
“We are entitled at least to try to get the security of forward looking declaratory and injunctive relief,” Gedge said.
He said nominal damages had a historic pedigree for the life of the nation and the city’s view would strip the court of power to do anything.
“The federal courts aren’t in the business of handing out meaningless consolation prizes,” he said.
Yandle took it under advisement.
City council members reached a decision before she did, and voted for repeal.
Gedge didn’t oppose the filing of the repeal, as long as he could respond.
He proposed to expedite the briefing schedule and give each side ten days, and Yandle adopted the plan.