Landlords Can't Challenge Constitutionality of Unenforced COVID Guaranty Nullification Law

What Happened: At the height of the pandemic, New York City adopted a law permanently voiding personal liability guarantees of commercial lease obligations arising between March 7, 2020, and June 30, 2021, and banning landlords from taking legal action to enforce those guarantees. A group of commercial landlords sued, claiming the so-called Guaranty Law was unconstitutional. The landlords lost in the lower court but won the appeal. Two years later, the case landed back in the appeals court. But this time the city changed its tactics, conceding that the Guaranty Law was unconstitutional but contending that the landlords didn’t have legal standing to bring the case because the law was never enforced. 

Ruling: The U.S. Appeals Court for the Second Circuit agreed and dismissed the case for lack of standing.

Reasoning: Not just anybody can sue the government (or any other defendant) over any issue. A plaintiff must demonstrate that it has standing, or a personal stake, in the matter by showing, among other things, that it suffered a concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent injury. The court ruled that the landlords in this case didn’t “come forward with a single instance in which the City sued or threatened to sue any commercial landlord for violating the Guaranty Law.” And, as even the landlords conceded, “the City has now unequivocally disavowed any intent to enforce the Guaranty Law against” them. Result: The landlords didn’t have standing to sue. Postscript: The court also rebuked the city for its “negligence” in not raising the standing issue two years earlier during the initial proceedings and thereby unnecessarily prolonging the litigation.

·       Bochner v. City of New York, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 25276