Mamdanis rent-freeze win could come back to bite him at the Supreme Court

Tenants’ groups and left-wing activists are cheering New York City’s newly announced multi-year rent freeze. But they could be in for a judicial smackdown: Don’t expect Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze to survive a constitutional challenge.In 2023 and twice in 2024 a hesitant US Supreme Court declined to hear building owners’ challenges to New York state’s rent regulations. Lower courts acknowledged the regulations diminished the value of rental properties but said the state was balancing the rights of owners with the need to protect tenants. At the time, Justice Clarence Thomas said the constitutionality of New York’s rent regulations is “an important and pressing question” — and that he looked forward to a rent-control case that clearly demonstrates the government going too far to take an owner’s property.Mamdani has given Justice Thomas what he’s been waiting for, on a silver platter.Moscow Mamdani’s scheme to deny landlords any rent hikes at all smacks of the kind of expropriation of private property that occurs in Cuba, Venezuela and other socialist nations. Not in America: The US Constitution prohibits it.The Takings Clause in Article 5 of the Bill of Rights bars government from imposing regulations that make a person’s property worthless.Everyone who owns anything — a home or a business of any sort — should feel threatened by Mamdani’s Bolshevik scheme to deny building owners fair compensation, dooming their rental properties to rapid decay and then literally seizing their buildings.  After landlords, who’s next?Under the framework established by the New York state Legislature, the Rent Guidelines Board must determine allowable rent hikes based on the specific costs landlords incur. But Mamdani’s hand-picked RGB members threw the letter of the law out the window.Fuel costs went up 11% in the last year, and insurance rose 10.5% — but Mamdani’s RGB announced last week that landlords will get no increa...