Tenants' groups and leftwing activists are cheering New York City's newly announced multiyear rent freeze. But Mayor Zohran Mamdani's rent scheme is headed for a judicial smackdown at the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2023 and twice in 2024, a hesitant Supreme Court declined to hear challenges by building owners to New York state's rent regulations. Lower courts had ruled that the regulations diminished the value of rental properties, but the state had good reasons to balance the rights of owners with the need to protect tenants.

At that time, Justice Clarence Thomas said the constitutionality of New York's rent regulations is "an important and pressing question," and he looked forward to a case that clearly demonstrated the government was going too far to take an owner's property.

Mamdani is giving Thomas what he's been waiting for -- on a silver platter.

Moscow Mamdani's scheme to deny landlords any rent hikes at all reeks of the kind of expropriation of private property that occurs in Cuba, Venezuela and other socialist nations. Not in America. It is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

The Fifth Amendment bars government from imposing regulations that make a person's property worthless.

Everyone who owns anything -- a home or a........

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