Patricia Iten, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Howard Iten v. County of Los Angeles, California

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the County of Los Angeles enacted a moratorium that prohibited commercial landlords from, among other things, evicting defaulting tenants and demanding immediate payment of overdue rent. Petitioner, a retired auto mechanic and small commercial landlord who suffered substantial losses by the moratorium, brought suit to challenge it as an unconstitutional “Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts,” U.S. Const. art. I, § 10. The district court dismissed Petitioner’s complaint for failure to state a claim, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed, both on the sole ground that the moratorium’s enactment and application to Petitioner’s lease contract was foreseeable. In contrast, this Court, followed by other lower courts, has used foreseeability as merely one, non-determinative factor to be considered in deciding whether a party has advanced a viable Contracts Clause claim. See, e.g., Sveen v. Melin, 584 U.S. 811, 820-24 (2018); City of El Paso v. Simmons, 379 U.S. 497, 514-15 (1965); Melendez v. City of New York, 16 F.4th 992, 1033-34 (2d Cir. 2021); Heights Apartments, LLC v. Walz, 30 F.4th 720, 728-30 (8th Cir. 2022). The question presented is: Whether a party is barred from stating a claim for relief for violation of the Contracts Clause merely because the party could have foreseen the enactment of the contract-impairing law?