Blog #287 Mamdani Vs. the US Supreme Court on Rent Freeze/Confiscation of Private Property
Mamdani’s rent-freeze win could come back to bite him — at the Supreme Court
Published June 29, 2026, 7:53 p.m. ET in the New York Post
Tenants’ groups and left-wing activists are cheering New York City’s newly announced multi-year rent freeze. But they could be in for a judicial smackdown: Don’t expect Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze to survive a constitutional challenge.
In 2023 and twice in 2024, a hesitant US Supreme Court declined to hear building owners’ challenges to New York state’s rent regulations.
Lower courts acknowledged the regulations diminished the value of rental properties but said the state was balancing the rights of owners with the need to protect tenants.
At the time, Justice Clarence Thomas said the constitutionality of New York’s rent regulations is “an important and pressing question” — and that he looked forward to a rent-control case that clearly demonstrates the government going too far to take an owner’s property.
Mamdani has given Thomas what he’s been waiting for, on a silver platter.
Moscow Mamdani’s scheme to deny landlords any rent hikes at all smacks of the kind of expropriation of private property that occurs in Cuba, Venezuela and other socialist nations.
Not in America: The US Constitution prohibits it.
The Takings Clause in Article 5 of the Bill of Rights bars government from imposing regulations that make a person’s property worthless.
Everyone who owns anything — a home or a business of any sort — should feel threatened by Mamdani’s Bolshevik scheme to deny building owners fair compensation, dooming their rental properties to rapid decay and then literally seizing their buildings.
After landlords, who’s next?
Under the framework established by the New York state Legislature, the Rent Guidelines Board must determine allowable rent hikes based on the specific costs landlords incur.
But Mamdani’s hand-picked RGB members threw the letter of the law out the window.
Fuel costs went up 11% in the last year, and insurance rose 10.5% — but Mamdani’s RGB announced last week that landlords will get no increases this year or next.
And no rent hikes in the years after that, either, if the RGB makes good on Mamdani’s campaign promise that rents will stay frozen as long as he’s the mayor.
Zero rent hikes will cause buildings to rapidly fall into disrepair — just what the new mayor intends.
Last month, he announced that City Hall “will take aggressive legal action” to “transfer ownership to responsible stewards when landlords fail to keep buildings up to code.”
Those stewards will include “community land trusts, nonprofits and even the tenants themselves,” he declared.
That’s allowed under current local law, but only under extreme circumstances: It applied to fewer than 30 properties in 2024, and generally doesn’t result in permanent confiscation.
But Mamdani’s rent freeze means many landlords will lack the revenue to keep apartments up to code.
The rent freeze deliberately creates the conditions for widespread confiscation, turning them into targets.
Think Bolshevik Moscow in 1917, when the Communists annulled private property rights, seized buildings and decreed them communal living spaces.
Lefties become the new land barons.
Last week RGB member Cristina Smyth, appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams, resigned in protest just hours before the vote.
Saying the freeze “was decided last year on the campaign trail,” she offered to help any building owner willing to wage a legal battle. “I will do everything I can to assist them in being successful,” she pledged.
Bring on the fight.
It’s worth noting that a lawsuit already filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against New York City and the RGB also has a significant shot at judicial success.
This suit focuses on the narrow case of so-called “zombie” apartments — units that stand empty and unrented due to a 2019 state law that tightly restricts how much owners can pass along to tenants when they spend what’s needed to get apartments up to code.
That leaves an estimated 57,000 zombie units sitting vacant, exacerbating the housing crunch and impoverishing building owners.
It’s likely to take two or three years for this case, or on any new challenge to Mamdani’s rent freeze, to reach the high court.
But when and if they do, the justices could well slap down Mamdani’s rent freeze, his confiscations or any portion of the city’s rent regulatory scheme as an unconstitutional “taking” — as Thomas is clearly itching to do.
And no matter how the throngs of left-wing tenant advocates may howl, Mamdani will have to comply.
Everyone in New York who owns anything — a home, a rental property, a diner, a bodega or any other business — has a stake in this legal fight.
Mamdani’s scheme to seize rental properties is a red flag that all property rights are in peril.
He’s going after landlords first, but you could be next.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.
How Mamdani's rent-freeze win could come back to bite him