CBA Record January-February 2024

Women Act, but they can only respond to CFNOs after they are enacted and, on a city-by-city basis. Moreover, challenging CFNOs are costly and time-consuming because they are usually facially neutral, requiring litigants to use statistical analy sis to prove disparate impact. Prochaska argues that states should pre vent municipalities from enacting CFNOs in the first place by passing preemption stat utes. Though courts employ different tests, generally a state can preempt local legisla tion by showing that the statewide interest in restricting CFNOs outweighs tradition ally local concerns in regulating health, welfare, and land use. For example, in 2022 Illinois enacted preemption legislation pro hibiting municipalities from punishing landlords or tenants based on police con tact. In preparing the legislation, advocates showed that CFNOs that monitored police contact harmed domestic abuse survivors across the state. Thus, to protect survivors of domestic violence, Illinois preempted local governments’ authority to implement these kinds of monitoring programs. State preemption statutes are only one part of a broader effort to combat the harms caused by CFNOs. Prochaska visualizes fighting CFNOs on multiple fronts: grass roots organizing, advocacy organizations, federal and state agencies, and state legisla tures. Combining these efforts can convince local governments to repeal their existing CFNOs and dissuade them from enacting new ones.

REVIEW OF REVIEWS

CONTINUED

Breaking Free from “Crime-Free”: State-Level Responses to Harmful Housing Ordinances, 27 by Jenna Prochaska, LEWIS & CLARK L. REV. 259 (2023) Reviewed by Maggie Franz, 3L at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

local police departments to surveil and detect a broad array of criminal activity and then evict the perpetrators. Munici palities often track tenants’ contact with police to determine whether a property is a “nuisance” and whether tenants are engaging in criminal activity. Thus, they encourage landlords to monitor police contact and evict tenants engaging in so called nuisance and criminal behavior. By authorizing and incentivizing evic tions, CFNOs increase housing instability for low-income renters, disproportion ately displacing Black and Latino ten ants. Because CFNOs use police contact as a proxy for criminal activity and nui sance, they dissuade residents from call ing police, in turn penalizing victims and survivors of other crimes. Advocacy organizations and federal agencies have successfully challenged CFNOs for violating the First and Four teenth Amendments as well as the Fair Housing Act and the Violence Against

Crime-free housing and nuisance prop erty ordinances (CFNOs) can harm low income and marginalized communities. CFNOs are municipal ordinances that authorize and incentivize landlords to evict tenants for criminal activity. Illinois has about 120 such laws. Though advo cacy organizations and federal agencies such as the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have had some success combatting CFNOs, Prochaska argues that state legislatures can use their broad powers over local governments to keep CFNOs from proliferating. CFNOs vary by municipality, but all share two features. First, they categorize a wide range of tenant conduct, such as littering and noise, as creating a nuisance property. Once a municipality designates a property as a nuisance, it penalizes the landlord, thus incentivizing the landlord to penalize the tenant. Second, CFNOs authorize landlords to collaborate with 30 law school teams participated in the CBA’s 41st Annual Moot Court Compe tition in November 2023 at the Dirksen Federal Building. The University of Hous ton Law School team was awarded the best brief and best overall team. Thank you to the many CBA members who served as brief graders and competition judges. Pictured from left to right: Associate Judge Martin Moltz, Circuit Court of Cook County; Sara Baldazo, University of Houston Law Center; Frank Cham bers, University of Houston Law Center; and Justice Margaret Stanton-McBride, Illinois Appellate Court. 2023 Moot Court Competition Winner

CBA RECORD 41