St. Paul City Council votes 4-3 to rescind residential tenant protections frozen by federal judge

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
·3 min read

Jun. 24—The St. Paul City Council voted 4-3 on Wednesday to officially rescind wide-ranging residential tenant protections that had barely rolled out before they were put on hold by a federal judge in April.

Council members promised to revisit the protections and return to the table with a refined proposal that will survive legal scrutiny.

"A vote for rescission is a vote for tenant protections because it will enable us to pass actual tenant protections at a quicker pace," said St. Paul City Council Member Chris Tolbert, who chairs the city's Housing and Redevelopment Authority. "As of right now (due to legal action), the ordinance is not in effect. The judge has I think made it pretty clear what his ruling will be at the end of the day."

Council President Amy Brendmoen agreed, saying the fight for tenants' rights need not happen in a court of law. As in St. Paul, a group of Minneapolis landlords have banded together to oppose a raft of tenant protections there through legal action, and St. Paul officials say they're keeping close watch over how that discussion unfolds in the courts.

Council members Brendmoen, Tolbert, Prince and Noecker voted in favor of rescinding the S.A.F.E. Housing ordinance. Council Members Nelsie Yang, Mitra Jalali and Dai Thao voted against it.

"I believe we are sending a message, by repealing this landmark fair housing policy, that undercuts what we say we intend to do," Jalali said.

REPEAL AND REPLACE?

Attorneys representing the Lamplighter Village Apartments and a series of landlord plaintiffs had indicated they would drop their lawsuit if St. Paul dropped its ordinance.

Housing advocates had asked the city to hold off on rescission until they could replace the ordinance with a new one that preserves most of the legal protections.

In a recent memo to the city, attorneys with the Housing Justice Center expressed concern that St. Paul's decision to back off "will provide powerful ammunition to plaintiffs' attorneys against the Minneapolis ordinance (the same law firm as in the Lamplighter case) in their appeal to the Eighth Circuit. The plaintiffs' attorneys in the Minneapolis case will point to immediate repeal as an admission by St. Paul that such ordinances are unconstitutional."

At the time of its drafting, St. Paul's tenant rights ordinance was hailed as one of the most aggressive in the nation.

The city ordinance limited the degree to which landlords can use credit history and criminal history to screen tenants, without ending such checks entirely. It also required landlords to give tenants of affordable housing 90 days notice before a building sale, and landlords were mandated to pay their tenants' relocation fees if rents climbed within three months of a sale.

Perhaps most controversially, landlords were required to explain their reasoning for dropping a tenant's lease by showing "just cause" upon demand.

In response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of St. Paul landlords, U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson granted their requested injunction in mid-April. Magnuson wrote that it's likely the landlords ultimately will win their case against the city, and he said the ordinance likely comprises an unconstitutional taking of private property. The rules were immediately put on hold.