The Constitutional Court has issued a warning message so that the legally established requirements are met in the evictions of people in vulnerable situations, in order to avoid cases of lack of protection. The court has used one of these cases to clarify how the current regulations should be interpreted, upholding the appeal for protection presented by a mother with minor children in a vulnerable situation to which it had not been applied. the suspension of the eviction procedure and the launch in the house in which the family lived for rent. These types of suspensions are planned for cases in which they are vulnerable tenants without a housing alternative.
The court that heard the matter in the first instance interpreted that this suspension could be requested only once, which determined the rejection of the appellant’s request for protection, having requested the stay of an eviction up to three times citing her vulnerable situation. This interpretation of the court prevented the application of the successive extensions of the suspension of evictions that have been approved by royal decree-law, despite the fact that the situation of vulnerability that determined the application of the measure was maintained. The resolution of the Constitutional Court considers that the interpretation that the judicial body made of the norm applied in this case – article 87 of Royal Decree-Law 8/2023, of December 27 – violates the right to effective judicial protection in its aspect of the demand for a judicial resolution based on law that does not incur irrationality or arbitrariness.
The ruling – for which Judge Enrique Arnaldo, from the conservative sector of the court, was the speaker – recalls that the successive royal decree laws (since the covid-19 crisis, eight in total) have been extending the maximum period of validity of this measure to suspend launches in cases where there is a situation of vulnerability. In fact, this regulation is still in force, at least until December 31, 2024, if it is not extended again, as mentioned by the court. In the opinion of the Second Chamber of the Constitutional Court, which is the one that has heard the case, the purpose of this extension of the suspension of launches “is none other than to maintain these protection measures over time to continue meeting the needs of these homes, which is incompatible with an approach that restricts the suspension of the launch to only being able to request it once.”
The judicial resolution that is the subject of the amparo appeal – the court affirms – is, for all of these reasons, unreasonable and contrary to article 24.1 of the Constitution, relating to the right to effective judicial protection. This resolution also lacks the necessary judgment of reinforced motivation. in those decisions that affect minors, while “the appellant’s family unit was made up of her husband and five minor children and that circumstance was not taken into account by the judicial body.”
The reporting magistrate has qualified the majority opinion of the court, included in the ruling, formulating in parallel a concurrent vote. Said magistrate agrees with what was resolved, but with other arguments, which he already highlighted in previous private votes, in which he maintained that the emergency legislation approved in relation to the pandemic “affects the core of the right to property, making it “is purely illusory for the owners of homes where people classified as vulnerable live.” These people, he adds, deserve the attention and help of the public powers within the framework of the social State, but not through “the denaturalization of the right to property and the deprivation of the power of disposal of the affected owners, to try to satisfy, at their expense, a purpose of social interest such as the protection of people considered to be in a vulnerable situation.”
