Local civil court judges may not typically draw widespread attention, but that could change as the U.S. faces an unprecedented eviction crisis.

In New Orleans, a city that already had housing challenges, voters recently elected a new First City Court judge in an Aug. 15 runoff that became heated, inspiring a 2,000-word analysis in a local magazine, a reddit ask-me-anything, and accusatory campaign mailers. Public concern largely hinged on the issue of evictions and whether the candidates, Marissa Hutabarat and Sara Lewis, would commit to using judicial discretion to limit the number of people who lose their homes.

“We believe legally that a judge has discretion, especially in extraordinary circumstances, to do any number of things,” said Hannah Adams, a staff attorney at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services. 

Adams, who advises and represents tenants in eviction cases, argues that judges are able to use judicial discretion to chart alternatives within the courtroom, especially during emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Adams, judges can “order additional time to move based on disability or health issues,” for example. Adams also contends that judges can require landlords to attempt a repayment plan. 

“The law does also entitle tenants to a reduction in rent in special circumstances if all or a portion of a home is not usable or livable to them, so a judge could rule in a tenant’s favor given that,” Adams added.

Additionally, tenant lawyers like Adams say judges can oversee consent judgments or defer cases to mediation. This can prevent an eviction, which would immediately displace a tenant and show up on their record.

But neither Hutabarat, who won with 60 percent of the vote, nor Lewis took a stance on discretion that reflected these possibilities. Still, the election helped local advocates draw new attention to judicial powers.

Lewis, an environmental lawyer, garnered the most support from progressive communities in New Orleans. Before the pandemic and recession hit, Lewis was highlighting the already existing eviction crisis within the city and she earned the endorsement of the progressive New Orleans Coalition. 

“When I filed to run in January, 50 percent of what the First City Court did was evictions and most people represented themselves, so I knew even then that would be a huge part of my work as a judge,” Lewis said.

In her campaign, Lewis proposed implementing a new pro bono mediation program, advocated for a Tenants’ Bill of Rights, and emphasized that she would make sure all people who came to her court would be informed of their rights and the court’s procedures. 

Over 90 percent of tenants are not represented by a lawyer in eviction proceedings, meaning that they don’t always have the full legal and procedural knowledge of their rights. Civil courts are often more conversational than criminal ones, so judges have more informal interaction with tenants and can play an important role in explaining their rights.

When asked about the eviction crisis in a July housing justice forum, Lewis emphasized that judges are required to follow the letter of the law and do not have the power to close eviction court, as some housing advocates have called for. Hutabarat, a personal injury lawyer, echoed that stance.

Hutabarat and her campaign did not respond to requests for an interview by The Appeal: Political Report. But she told VAYLA New Orleans, a nonprofit focused on Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, that she would ask landlords to “compromise and work with these family members,” to come up with a payment plan or allow more time to move. She made similar statements to NOLA.com.

Some New Orleans judges are already making such requests. In June, Judge Monique Morial of the First City Court asked that landlords give tenants more time than the typical 24 to 48 hours to move out. But Morial said she is not able to enforce these longer timeframes without the landlords’ consent. 

In the weeks leading up to the election, Hutabarat’s campaign faced scrutiny for the fact that her live-in partner, Mark El-Amm, owns short-term rental properties in New Orleans. Short-term rentals, like those listed by the companies Airbnb and Vrbo, intensify housing insecurity and gentrification in New Orleans. When asked about this by local magazine Antigravity, a Hutabarat campaign representative called the question sexist, though Hutabarat herself did eventually confirm that a member of her household is involved in the short-term rental market. 

Now that Hutabarat is elected, housing justice advocates hope that she will cultivate a tenant-friendly culture in her courthouse as a new wave of eviction cases comes in.

Prior to the pandemic, New Orleans had nearly twice the eviction rate of the national average; in some Black neighborhoods, that multiplied to nearly four times the average. According to a report from Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative, a local housing justice organization, 62 percent of cases in Orleans Parish resulted in a court-ordered eviction with a 24-hour notice to vacate. In the majority of these cases, the tenant owed no more than one month’s rent.

“The people who go to [First City Court] are usually lower-income and lack legal representation, so a judge can have a really big impact,” said Frank Southall, lead organizer at Jane Place.

The pandemic has only exacerbated these already exigent circumstances as more people are unemployed and struggling to afford rent. In Louisiana, one in five renters are at risk of being evicted by the end of the year. At the time of publication, neither the state legislature nor Congress had extended an eviction moratorium or offered further protections to renters. 

The city has offered rental assistance programs, but thousands of residents applied and the funds were quickly exhausted. Mayor LaToya Cantrell is now asking New Orleanians to donate to a rental assistance fund to help housing insecure residents. 

Absent further state and federal support for renters, judges could be what stands between some renters and homelessness.

“If there isn’t any relief by the end of this month, I just don’t know how the city is going to handle the volume of people who are going to get evicted,” said Adams. According to a report this week from WWNO, the city’s NPR station, nearly 30,000 households are at risk of being evicted in Orleans Parish. There are about 150,000 households in the parish. 

Even beyond elections, civil courts may continue to be a focus as evictions continue this month. 

On July 30, the New Orleans Renters Rights Assembly shut down the First City Court by blocking all entrances, preventing multiple eviction hearings from occurring that day. The group asked the court to stop evictions and the government to provide better rental assistance. 

Tenants rights organizing has become a key fight in the city as the pandemic lockdown enters its sixth month. The Renters Rights Assembly has set up tables outside apartment complexes to recruit tenants to the fight, as well as hosted weekly public Zoom calls. 

“Housing and the way that people relate to things like housing justice is so particular to the laws and policies and even judges of a city. So the local fights are really important,” said Southall, who is part of the Renters Rights Assembly. 

Southall emphasized that unlike some states, Louisiana does not have robust tenants rights written into the law. 

Princeton’s Eviction Lab gave Louisiana zero out of five stars on its COVID Housing Policy Scorecard which measured court processes, short-term support, and tenancy protection efforts, among other aspects. At least 20 states scored one star or above. These differences in policies across cities and states may prove particularly meaningful as 17 million to 23 million Americans face evictions in the coming months. 

Los Angeles County has extended its eviction moratorium through the end of September. But in Detroit and San Antonio, Texas, eviction moratoriums have ended, sparking protests at courts where eviction hearings have resumed. 

To Southall, this makes local organizing all the more important. 

“People recognize that there are solutions and are willing to push for a future that is rooted in revolutionary thinking while also knowing there are actionable reforms we can take now,” he said. “Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in some of these [policy] positions, but it’s important to see that people are just like, ‘Give me decent housing.’”

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Sheriff Jewell Williams faces three opponents in his bid for a third term in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. They are Rochelle Bilal, a former police officer and president of the Guardian Civic League, the local chapter of the National Black Police Association, as well as Larry King Sr. and Malika Rahman, who are both former sheriff’s deputies.

The campaign is taking place against the backdrop of three sexual harassment lawsuits filed against Williams, who has denied wrongdoing. Two have been settled; a third is still pending.

Philadelphia’s Democratic Party initially recommended endorsing Williams but promptly revoked this recommendation in April. He has the support of prominent local unions, however. John McNesby, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 5, suggested in April that Bilal’s past support for Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner had cost her support among law enforcement officers.

“She has some loyalty from people who don’t really help our officers,” McNesby told the Philadelphia Inquirer about Bilal. Strikingly, back when she endorsed Krasner in 2017, Bilal did so as the head of a law enforcement group as well since the Guardian Civic League, which had 2,000 members at the time, is a group that represents Black police officers. Krasner has headlined fundraising efforts for Bilal this year.

Two policy areas are on the menu in this election. First, the sheriff’s office is in charge of selling foreclosed property, whether that stems from mortgage debt or tax delinquency (these are called sheriff sales), and some candidates have argued that the sheriff’s office should do more to assist people whose properties is being foreclosed. Another focal point is ICE’s presence inside and outside city courthouses, especially in light of a reported case of an ICE agent trying to find a defendant in a local courthouse in March.

Foreclosures and sheriff sales

Local housing advocates have denounced an increase in the pace of foreclosure sales, and have called on the sheriff’s office to do more to combat Philadelphia’s eviction crisis. Nikil Saval, an organizer with the left-leaning group Reclaim Philadelphia and the Democratic leader of the Second Ward, compared an eviction’s effects to those of a criminal conviction. They are both a “mark on your record” that “has ramifying effects,” Saval told me.

He added that the sheriff’s office could play a “critical role” in shifting from a “culture that favors punishment” to one “that values keeping people in their home.”

Those who support a sustained pace of sheriff sales argue that these represent economic opportunities for buyers, as well as for former owners. Williams has touted his efforts to more efficiently return to former owners the money leftover from a sale if there is an excess once debts and fees are paid off. A WHYY investigation on the impact of the boom in sheriff sales reported that Williams “offers classes on bidding at sheriff sales and has trumpeted the increasing number of successful auctions,” but that “some struggling homeowners say they’re caught in the middle.” The Inquirer also reported last month on complaints that the city is not adequately notifying homeowners of foreclosure sale proceedings. 

A number of Williams’s challengers have called for reform, and I asked all four candidates’ campaigns how they planned to change the office’s approach to foreclosures.

Bilal responded that she would shift the focus of the office from managing sales to preventing foreclosures. She said she would be “rearranging the budget to put less money in advertising and selling homes” and “more money into foreclosure prevention and community education.” This would include better informing people of their options to fight a foreclosure, connecting them with legal assistance, and establishing a “consumer protection division” within her office to investigate complaints.

“You need to use your resources to be an advocate for change,” Bilal told the Philadelphia Tribune upon entering the race in November. “Use those resources at your disposal to be something other than a bully for the banks.”

Rahman told me that her focus would be on better assisting people whose property has been foreclosed, for instance by “supplying” them with “resources to regain housing.” Her position is not “to stop foreclosures,” she said, but to “ensure that foreclosures have the least negative impact.” Rahman similarly told the Philadelphia Tribune that she wants to connect people with nonprofit organizations “so we can assure that if that process has to happen, it is done in a dignified way.”

King and Williams did not answer my request for comment. King has called for a moratorium on sheriff sales, and he has specifically criticized the fees that must be paid by the person whose property is foreclosed.

ICE in Philadelphia’s courthouses

Philadelphia’s sheriff manages security in courthouses, which puts the office at the frontlines of ICE activity. ICE has arrested immigrants who attend proceedings in Pennsylvania courthouses. The Sheller Center for Social Justiceat Temple University published a report in January on the scope of ICE’s presence, and on the fear it creates. “These ICE arrests fundamentally undermine the fair administration of justice by Pennsylvania courts,” Jennifer Lee, a law professor who leads the Sheller Center, told me.

Rebecca Hufstader, an immigration specialist at the Defenders Association of Philadelphia, said that immigrants her office works with consider skipping court dates—which can trigger mounting legal issues—because of “ICE’s presence in and around the courthouse.” It has “a chilling effect,” she told me, “on anybody that is trying to access the justice system, whether it’s our clients, people accessing the civil justice system… We want to be able to tell people to come to court but I can’t make a promise that there won’t be an issue.”

Williams rolled out an agreement with ICE in April. This new policy requires ICE agents to identify themselves to a sheriff’s deputy upon entering a courthouse, and bars them from arresting someone within the courthouse.

Lee and Hufstader both said that the agreement is an important but insufficient one since it does not address arrests outside the courthouse, nor does it limit actions other than arrests within it.

“We would like to see the sheriff extend the policy to the sidewalk outside the courthouse, and we’d like to see more restrictions on asking questions inside the courthouse to anyone that might be in it,” Hufstader told me. Lee agreed, urging the sheriff to “extend its prohibition on arrest without a judicial warrant to the area outside of the courthouse” and address “ICE intimidation inside the courthouse.” As a model, she pointed to the courthouse policy of Bernalillo County, New Mexico.

Bilal and Rahman told me that they both agreed with Williams’s new policy. “No one should feel intimidated or unsafe while in the courthouse,” Bilal said. Rahman emphasized that his was long overdue. “It is our due diligence to make sure that all people who enter that courthouse are safe, secure, and their rights are upheld,” she said. Neither candidate committed to further reforms when asked.

In this Democratic city, the winner of the May 21 primary will face no Republican in the general election; candidates who do not belong to the two main parties can still file to run until August.

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