The Supreme Court has upheld rent control for more than a century and, as recently as June 2025, keeps turning away landlord challenges to rent stabilization laws. That said, Supreme Court rent control precedent is less settled than the string of denials suggests: a 2021 decision has given challengers new constitutional ammunition, a split has opened among the federal appeals courts, and at least two sitting justices have publicly invited a better-crafted case.
A Century of Precedent Upholding Rent Control
The Court first blessed rent control in Block v. Hirsh (1921), sustaining a federal rent statute for Washington, D.C., that was enacted during the post–World War I housing shortage. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that the crisis had “clothed the letting of buildings” with enough public interest to justify regulation, though he framed the law as temporary emergency legislation meant to “tide over a passing trouble.”1Legal Information Institute. Block v. Hirsh, 256 US 135 (1921) Holmes also warned that regulations “pressed to a certain height” could cross into an unconstitutional taking. That tension, between emergency justification and permanent regimes, has shadowed rent control ever since.
The modern footing came in two cases. In Pennell v. City of San Jose (1988), the Court upheld an ordinance letting hearing officers consider a tenant’s financial hardship in approving rent increases, calling it “a rational attempt to accommodate the conflicting interests of protecting tenants from burdensome rent increases while at the same time ensuring that landlords are guaranteed a fair return on their investment.”2Justia. Pennell v. City of San Jose, 485 US 1 (1988) Four years later, in Yee v. City of Escondido (1992), mobile home park owners argued that rent caps combined with eviction limits amounted to a forced physical occupation of their land. The Court rejected that framing. Because the owners had voluntarily rented their lots, the laws merely regulated the landlord-tenant relationship rather than authorizing an “unwanted physical occupation.”3Justia. Yee v. Escondido, 503 US 519 (1992)
That distinction did a lot of work. Physical takings are unconstitutional per se and require compensation regardless of public benefit. Use regulations get the far more forgiving balancing test from Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City (1978), which weighs economic impact, interference with investment-backed expectations, and the character of the government action.4Legal Information Institute. Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 US 104 Rent-stabilized buildings usually keep some income and some economic value, so they rarely fail that test. Together, Pennell and Yee looked like durable protection for rent stabilization. The framework held for nearly thirty years.
How Cedar Point Nursery Changed the Argument
In Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021), the Supreme Court ruled that a California regulation requiring agricultural employers to let union organizers onto their property for up to three hours a day was a per se physical taking.5Justia. Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 US (2021) The case had nothing to do with housing, but its reasoning reached much further than farms. When the government appropriates an owner’s right to exclude others from their land, even temporarily, it has committed a physical taking. The right to exclude, the Court said, is “one of the most treasured rights of property ownership.” Duration goes only to how much compensation is owed, not to whether a taking has occurred.6Supreme Court of the United States. Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, No. 20-107
Landlord attorneys moved on that logic immediately. If a few hours of union access counts as a physical taking, what about rent stabilization rules that make it extraordinarily difficult to remove a tenant? Under what some scholars call the “maximalist” reading of Cedar Point, eviction protections could be reclassified from ordinary use regulations into per se physical takings, which would require compensation no matter how strong the public interest.
That reading also puts pressure on Yee. The 1992 decision rested on the idea that landlords voluntarily invite tenants in. But modern rent stabilization laws often make it very hard to remove a tenant who moved in decades ago under a prior owner, and succession rights can let family members inherit a lease. If a landlord functionally cannot regain possession, the “voluntary” framing starts to strain. The argument now taking shape is not that rent caps are too low. It is that the combination of below-market rent ceilings, near-absolute eviction protections, and succession rights amounts to a permanent appropriation of the right to exclude.
A Circuit Split Has Opened
The federal courts of appeals are no longer saying the same thing. The Eighth Circuit, in Heights Apartments, LLC v. Walz (2022), held that a landlord had plausibly alleged a per se physical takings claim under Cedar Point against eviction moratorium restrictions. The Second Circuit has gone the other way, rejecting similar arguments aimed at New York’s rent stabilization system. A disagreement of that kind among the circuits is the sort of thing that typically draws Supreme Court attention.
Recent Cert Denials and What the Justices Signaled
Even so, the Court has repeatedly passed on the issue. In February 2024, it denied review in 74 Pinehurst LLC v. New York (Docket 22-1130) and 335-7 LLC v. City of New York (Docket 22-1170), both challenging New York’s Rent Stabilization Law as an unconstitutional taking. In November 2024, it denied certiorari again in G-Max Management, Inc. v. New York (Docket 23-1148) and Building and Realty Institute of Westchester and Putnam Counties v. New York (Docket 23-1220).7Supreme Court of the United States. G-Max Management Inc. v. New York, No. 23-1148 In June 2025, it declined yet another landlord appeal raising similar issues. Each denial left the lower court rulings upholding rent control in place.
A denial of certiorari is not a ruling on the merits. It does not mean the justices agree with the lower courts. What it does signal is that the Court has not yet seen a case presenting the question in the right posture. The accompanying statements, however, say a great deal.
When the Court turned away 74 Pinehurst, Justice Thomas wrote separately that the constitutionality of rent stabilization regimes is “an important and pressing question.” He acknowledged the circuit split, noting that the Second Circuit had rejected the landlords’ takings claims while “at least one other Court of Appeals has accepted similar claims.” He concluded that the petitions before the Court relied on “generalized allegations” and were poor vehicles for resolving the issue, adding: “In an appropriate future case, we should grant certiorari to address this important question.”8Supreme Court of the United States. 74 Pinehurst LLC v. New York, No. 22-1130 – Statement of Thomas, J.
Justice Gorsuch went further in the November 2024 denials. In both G-Max and Building and Realty Institute, he noted that he would have granted the petitions outright.9Supreme Court of the United States. Building and Realty Institute v. New York, No. 23-1220 Granting certiorari takes four votes. At least two justices are now on record as ready to take the question up.
What a Future Challenge Would Need to Show
Justice Thomas’s statement doubles as a roadmap. He described what an effective facial challenge would need: a clear showing of “how New York City regulations coordinate to completely bar landlords from evicting tenants.” He described what an effective as-applied challenge would need: evidence of “whether specific New York City regulations prevent petitioners from evicting actual tenants for particular reasons.” Both formulations point in the same direction, away from abstract complaints about unfairness and toward concrete, documented harm tied to specific buildings and specific tenants. Future petitioners are almost certainly drafting with those sentences in front of them.
What This Means for Tenants and Landlords Now
Roughly 32 states ban local governments from adopting rent control at all. Only a handful of states and the District of Columbia currently run active rent stabilization programs, with New York, California, and Oregon among the most prominent. If you live in a jurisdiction without rent control, none of this directly affects your rent, because the Supreme Court question is about challenges to existing regimes, not a federal right to one. The litigation making its way toward the Court overwhelmingly targets New York’s system, which has existed in various forms since the 1940s and is among the most restrictive in the country.
For tenants in rent-stabilized units, the practical picture has not changed. Every Supreme Court challenge to date has been rejected or turned away, and the lower court decisions upholding rent control remain in force. For landlords, the message in the recent statements is that generalized grievances will not move the Court. Specific, well-documented evidence that a particular property has lost its economic value or that an owner has been permanently stripped of the ability to decide who occupies the premises is the kind of record that might. The constitutional question is not whether rent control is good policy. It is whether specific rent control regimes have crossed from regulation into taking, and after a century of Supreme Court decisions, that question is still open.