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By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief

WASHINGTON, D.C.- I n a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme court on Thursday struck down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) eviction moratorium saying the federal agency lacked authority to issue such a mandate and paving the way for a flood of evictions nationwide as new variants of the coronavirus continue to emerge and Black America embraces itself to be among those hardest hit by the never-ending eviction crisis.

Led by the more conservative arm of the court, and with the court's three liberal justices dissenting, the court sided with a group of landlords and  ruled that the  CDC does not have statutory or any other authority to bring evictions to a standstill.

"It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken," the court's majority wrote in an unsigned opinion. "But that has not happened. Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts."

A report by the Aspen Institute that came out last year during the height of the pandemic says an estimated 30 million to 40 million people in the U.S, both renters and home dwellers alike,  are at risk of eviction due to the COVID-19 housing crisis. And Black neighborhoods should embrace themselves for the worst

According to Aspen, there were averages of 1,880,053 eviction filings and 665,668 evictions per year. Each year, an average of 666,396 of these eviction filings (35.4%) and 181,495 of these evictions (27.2%) took place in Black-majority neighborhoods, the report says.

Research continues to show that Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be suffering economically during the pandemic and remain at greater risk for evictions than their White counterparts. A  report dubbed "The State of the Nation's Housing 2020" found that over half of Black and Hispanic renter households were cost burdened going into the pandemic,compared to 42 percent of Asian and white households.

Issued earlier this month after Congress could not agree on evictions legislation and President Joe Biden would not sign another executive order banning such evictions, the CDC evictions ban had been applicable to areas of the country with high or substantial transmission of  COVID-19 and was set to expire Oct 3, CDC officials said in an announcement at the time.