Rent Control Defended In U.S. Supreme Court

A Harvard law professor last week defended the legality of rent control laws in Berkeley, Calif., before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Berkeley landlords are suing the city for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, which outlaws price-fixing.

Laurence H. Tribe '62, Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law, who is representing Berkeley, said a decision against the city could jeopardize Cambridge's 15-year-old rent control regulations.

"The case could have cataclysmic repercussions if we were to lose," Tribe said. "No rent control in the country would be safe."

Seventeen thousand of the city's 32,000 rental units have artificially low rents, which are mandated for most older apartments as a result of a 1969 resolution declaring a "housing emergency" in Cambridge.

Cambridge rent control would be subject to court reversal if the Supreme Court decides that all rent control violates the federal anti-trust laws, said Tribe.

But city officials here stressed that since Cambridge's rent control has been approved by the state while Berkeley's has not, a victory for the California landlords might not affect rent control here.

Tribe said the landlords are equating municipal regulation with private anti-competitive behavior. "The economic powers of the state such as rent control are sharply distinguished from state authorization of cartels" and are not "combinations in restraint of trade," he said.