Conservative 
Search
Trending
Current News
We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.
OAN Commentary by: Mehek Cooke
Friday, September 27, 2024
The Biden-Harris administration’s illegally concocted rent control scheme is on track to collide with the United States Supreme Court system, as the White House is seeking to exploit a legal tax loophole gifted by Chief Justice John Roberts during the Obamacare decision. Congress must immediately reject any attempt by the Biden-Harris administration to use this tactical constitutional workaround when the rent control legislation comes up for consideration.
Despite overwhelming historical evidence that price controls disrupt markets and cause harm to consumers, the Biden administration and the Harris for President Campaign recently doubled down on a two-pronged national rent control proposal that would negatively impact every single state.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board rightly exposed this administrative effort as a politically driven attempt to pin the Biden-Harris administration’s inflationary failures on landlords during an election season. Unfortunately, however, this fact will not change the constitutional realities that surround the plan.
First, the positive news: the first prong of the Biden-Harris rent control plan—banning the use of pricing algorithms by landlords—is unlikely to withstand legal scrutiny.
The administration alleges that software providing pricing recommendations to landlords violates the Sherman Antitrust Act because it helps them maximize returns. However, established case law strongly refutes this argument.
In a landmark 1940 Supreme Court case, United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., the high court established that the Department of Justice must prove a direct agreement to fix prices between parties to show a violation of the Sherman Act. The mere use of landlords using the same pricing software, without evidence of collusion or price-fixing, does not meet the threshold for antitrust violations. As such, it is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will accept the Biden-Harris Department of Justice’s antitrust arguments on this matter.
However, the second component of the Biden-Harris rent control proposal is more dangerous and may find a pathway through the courts — a federal rent cap, which the administration has backed with punitive tax penalties on landlords who refuse to comply.
While courts once rejected such schemes as clear violations of states’ rights and the Constitution’s Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Roberts Court’s 2012 decision on the Affordable Care Act opened the door for creative legal arguments for approving new, overreaching federal mandates.
Essentially, Chief Justice Roberts rebranded Obamacare’s individual mandate as a tax, thereby approving it under Congress’s power to levy taxes even though it directly infringed on states’ rights. This inventive interpretation provided a dangerous precedent allowing for any unpopular government mandate to be renamed as a tax as a means of sidestepping the constitutional limits on its federal authority.
Constitutional scholars warned that this ruling would transcend far beyond healthcare, enabling future administrations to impose sweeping government regulations under the guise of taxation. The Biden-Harris rent control proposal directly is now directly confirming those fears, leveraging tax penalties as a Trojan horse for expanding the federal government’s power and authority.
Regardless of the constitutional questions that surround the administration’s rent control plans, Congress still holds the power to stop this regulatory scheme in the same way that it ultimately repealed the Obamacare individual mandate.
And it should. The domino effect of economic implications that can come from the federal government implementing federal rent control would be extremely detrimental.
If the federal government can deny tax deductions to real estate firms that don’t comply with rent control measures, nothing would stop future administrations from using similar tax penalties to enforce compliance with other political policies, such as environmental regulations, diversity quotas, or labor practices. This unchecked power could lead to numerous federal mandates, each eroding free enterprise, stifling economic growth, and consumer choice under the cover of tax policy.
By blocking this rent control scheme, Congress can preserve the economic freedoms that underpin our nation’s prosperity. The future of American markets and consumers depends on it.
Cooke, an attorney and political strategist, is a surrogate for the Trump for President Campaign and the Republican National Convention.
