A federal judge has vacated the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationwide eviction moratorium amid the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly leaving many Americans in danger of being houseless, CNBC reports. The CDC imposed the ban in September, and President Joe Biden had extended it until July 2021, but Judge Dabney Friedrich questioned the health agency’s authority over the country. “The question for the Court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not,” the judge said. Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told CNBC that it remains unclear whether the reversal of the ban would affect the entire country. “Several court rulings have attempted to strike down the moratorium, but all had limited application,” she said. “While this ruling is written more starkly than previous ones, it likely has equally limited application, impacting only the plaintiffs who brought the case.”

In a statement, the Justice Department said it “has already filed a notice of appeal of the decision and intends to seek an emergency stay of the order pending appeal.” “The CDC’s eviction moratorium... protects many renters who cannot make their monthly payments due to job loss or health care expenses,” the statement continues. “Scientific evidence shows that evictions exacerbate the spread of COVID-19, which has already killed more than half a million Americans, and the harm to the public that would result from unchecked evictions cannot be undone.”