Apartment Assn. of Los Angeles etc. v. City of Los Angeles (2026)

Citation: Apartment Assn. of Los Angeles etc. v. City of Los Angeles (2026)
Parent Document: Apartment Assn. of Los Angeles etc. v. City of Los Angeles (2026)
Jurisdiction: California (state)
Effective Date: 2026-05-14
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10859038/apartment-assn-of-los-angeles-... ↗

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       Birkenfeld explained that the other challenged provision of
the charter amendment “requir[ing] a landlord to obtain a
certificate of eviction before seeking to recover possession of a
rent-controlled unit invalidly conflicts with sections 1159 through
1179a of the Code of Civil Procedure, which provide landlords
with a summary procedure for exercising their rights of
repossession against tenants. . . . Unlike the limitations imposed
by the charter amendment . . . [on] the grounds for eviction,
which can affect summary repossession proceedings only by
making substantive defenses available to the tenant, the
requirement of a certificate of eviction raises procedural barriers
between the landlord and the judicial proceeding.” (Birkenfeld,
supra, 17 Cal.3d at p. 151; see Pasadena, supra, 117 Cal.App.5th
at p. 244.)
       As we shall explain, the Eviction Threshold Ordinance is
not preempted by the Unlawful Detainer Act because the former
is a permissible substantive regulation of the grounds for
eviction, rather than an impermissible procedural limitation.
The Eviction Threshold Ordinance does not extend the unlawful
detainer timeline, does not prohibit a landlord from proceeding
under the state statutory timeline, and does not require that
landlords must affirmatively act in some particular way before
commencing unlawful detainer proceedings. Rather, the
ordinance at issue regulates the substantive basis for eviction by
creating a substantive precondition (i.e., nonpayment of rent in
an amount equal to one month’s fair market value) that must be
satisfied before a cause of action for unlawful detainer accrues.
       The local regulation here is analytically similar to that
upheld in San Francisco Apartment Assn. v. City and County of
San Francisco (2018) 20 Cal.App.5th 510 (SFAA 2018), which

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