Here is the Reply Brief in Harmon v. Kimmel, No. 11-496 (filed Mar. 20, 2012), the case in which a Manhattan property owner is challenging New York's rent control law as unconstitutional:
Respondents confuse the issues with their scattershot assertions that rent stabilization concerns merely "landlord tenant relations," "economic regulation," "price controls" and "economic liberties," and is just a matter of political and legislative policy. They disregard controlling precedent of this Court and seemingly concede that the Court of Appeals was mistaken. They also each acknowledge the existence of the "different case" standard set forth in Yee v. City of Escondido, 503 U.S. 519, 528 (1992). However, despite having argued otherwise to this Court and to the Court of Appeals in prior litigation, the State now argues that rent stabilization does not present the elements of the "different case" standard. The conflcts with decisions of this Court and the circuit split, and the reserved issue in Yee remain crystal clear notwithstanding the smoke of respondents’ arguments.
The fundamental question presented is whether New York’s possessory rent regulation scheme as applied to the Harmons is unconstitutional. A law that enables uninvited tenants and their successors to occupy the Harmons’ home over their objection, for as long as they please, could never pass constitutional muster. Permanent dispossession is nine-tenths of this law. For the Harmons, there is no way out; not for their own family use, not by demolition, not by withdrawal from the market and not by any other use.
Justice Alito asked recently in another case, "...if you related the facts of this case as they come to us to an ordinary homeowner, don’t you think most ordinary homeowners would say this kind of thing can’t happen in the United States?”[*] The Harmons respectfully request this Court to grant their petition to say that it cannot.
Br. at 1-2 (footnotes omitted).
* Justice Alito asked this question at oral argument in Sackett v. EPA, No. 10-1062.
We posted the cert petition and three amicus briefs in support here and here, the State's BIO, and the City's BIO. The Federalist Society posted a podcast about the case with Professor Richard Epstein, available here.
Here's the Court's docket page for the case.
Reply Brief, Harmon v. Kimmel, 11-496 (filed Mar. 20, 2012)
