Baltimore’s abandoned property ordinance violates rights of evicted tenants, 4th Circuit rules

A Baltimore ordinance that deems any property left behind after an eviction as abandoned violates the constitutional rights of tenants, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the city violated the due process rights of two tenants who lost personal belongings when they were evicted from their Baltimore home in 2019. The tenants, Marshall and Tiffany Todman, never got back items including family photos and the cremated remains of a loved one, according to court documents.

The appeal centers on a 2007 city ordinance that prohibited landlords from putting evicted tenants’ things on the sidewalk to prevent blight and piles of abandoned belongings in the streets. The law also gave landlords the immediate right to take possession of any belongings left in a residence.

Under the law, tenants have no way to reclaim their property and landlords are not required to store the property for any period of time before taking possession.

A three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling that found the ordinance violated tenants’ rights because they did not receive adequate warning that they would lose their belongings.

Baltimore’s Law Department declined to comment on the decision in a statement: “As this matter is ongoing, we will reserve all statements for the appropriate judicial forum.”

A lawyer for the Todmans praised the decision.

“Countless tenants in Baltimore had all of their belongings taken away without warning during already traumatic and disruptive evictions,” said the lawyer, Joseph S. Mack. “Hopefully this opinion will lead the city to replace the Abandonment Ordinance with a more human approach that respects the constitutional rights of tenants.”

The decision involves a tenant-holding-over case, where tenants stay in a property past the end of their lease. Holdover tenants are not entitled to receive notice of the date that their eviction will take place. When tenants face eviction because they owe rent, they are notified of their eviction date because they can stay in the property if they pay off what they owe up until that date.

The Todmans’ eviction was a tenant-holding-over action, so they did not know what day their eviction would occur. The couple planned to leave the apartment by Aug. 2, 2019, when their new home became available, they claimed in their lawsuit. They had hired a moving truck and packed up their belongings, but the eviction took place July 31, 2019, two days earlier than expected, according to court records.

The Todmans were not home when the eviction happened, so they lost access to nearly all of their belongings, including a motorcycle. Their landlord offered to sell the property back for $5,800, according to the 4th Circuit opinion. He ultimately returned some of the possessions without payment, but the Todmans never got some of their belongings back.

The notice that is sent to tenants before an eviction is also confusingly written, the 4th Circuit panel wrote. The document warns that personal property will be deemed abandoned after an eviction, but the warning appears to apply only in failure-to-pay-rent cases because the notice is poorly worded, the judges agreed.

“Respecting one of the Constitution’s most basic guarantees should be simple and straightforward,” the panel wrote. “The notice due plaintiffs such as the Todmans should include the date of the eviction and the threat and consequences of abandonment. Critically, the notice should be readily accessible and easily understood and should be of a form that drafters of the ordinance would appreciate if their own property were at risk.”

The panel criticized the city for passing off blame to the state judiciary, which creates the notice form that is sent to tenants. The city could require landlords to provide additional notice or provide the notice itself, the judges wrote.

“What it cannot do is evade the requirements of the Due Process Clause by throwing up its hands and saying, ‘We don’t make the notice form,'” wrote Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who authored the 30-page opinion.

The panel also agreed the city can be held liable for damages when the ordinance causes a violation of tenants’ rights.

A federal jury awarded the Todmans $186,000 in damages for emotional distress and the loss of their personal belongings in February 2023. The city did not challenge the amount of the award but appealed the lower court’s finding that the abandonment ordinance violated the Todmans’ due process rights.