Who Cares About the CARES Act?

With the COVID pandemic in the past, and no new pandemic announced yet, who would be caring today about the “CARES” Act (Pub. L. No. 116-136, 134 Stat. 281 (2020)? I am talking about one of its remaining requirements, the length of an eviction notice, mandated to be at least 30 days for the “covered” properties. Turns out, the tenants, the landlords, and the practitioners care about this issue a lot, on both sides of the docket. Has it expired already or not? The quest to find the answer continues.

The provision in focus is Section 4024 of the CARES Act, codified at 15 U.S.C. § 9058, particularly subparts (c) and (c)(1) that reads: “Notice. The lessor of a covered dwelling unit … may not require the tenant to vacate the covered dwelling unit before the date that is 30 days after the date on which the lessor provides the tenant with a notice to vacate.” The definition of a “covered dwelling” is in the same statute (15 U.S.C. § 9058), subpart (a). In summary, it is a dwelling leased for residential purposes, and where one of a federal subsidy program is involved.

On February 25, 2026, the 30-day notification requirement was officially rescinded and the publication of such final rule was published in the Federal Register, here. If this was all, this article would have ended here. But the rule survived its rescission, and the story entered its stage of uncertainty, where it is still today.

Many courts held that the notice requirement is deemed alive until it is declared otherwise. “We cannot insert an expiration date where Congress omitted one.” (Arvada Village Gardens LP v. Garate (Colo. 2023) 529 P.3d 105, ¶ 13,) holding the requirement has not expired, citing other states’ decisions.) But see Iowa decision folding the other way around, in MIMG CLXXII Retreat on 6th, LLC v. Miller ((Iowa 2025) 16 N.W.3d 489), holding that taking (c)(1) part out of the rest of the statute would lead to “an absurd result.” (Id., 493.) The Iowa court saw the omission of the expiration date in (c)(1) is no issue since “The omission does not mean that subsection (c)(1) is unrelated to the moratorium period. Rather, in our view it means that subsection (c)(1) is limited to defaults arising during the moratorium period.” (Id., 497.) The Iowa decision is also important as it has a summary of several other states’ positions, as of April 2025.

There is also a split of opinions if the 30-day requirement applies to all kinds of notices or just the ones for non-payment of rent, as the Iowa decision indicated. That issue happened to be more often litigated in the state of Washington, where the issue ended with the holding in Housing Authority of the County of King v. Knight ((Wash. Sup. Ct., 2025) 563 P. 3d 1058), finding that the requirement is only for a non-payment notice.

Even more technical of an argument was made in Virginia, in Woodrock River Walk, LLC v. Rice ((Va. Ct. App. 2024) 906 S.E.2d 682), holding that the recovery of possession is the act prohibited in 30 days, not the notice’s length: “we find that Congress did not intend 15 U.S.C. § 9058(c) to prevent landlords from filing a summons during the 30 days after a landlord provides notice.” (Id., 685.) This timing argument is not an outlier: the reasoning was accepted locally in Alameda county, in an undisclosed decision, also in 2024.

So, what will happen with that 30-day notice requirement, and when? The teaser response is that no one knows. A recent report from the Congressional Research Service lays out where things now stand, and you can see that there is no finality yet on the issue. The initially “final” rule was un-finaled with the solicitation of public comments by April 27, 2026, with some comments submitted by then in opposition to the requirement’s expiration. No further ruling took place afterwards and the question is now posted to Congress to decide on, with no definite timeline. This might as well mean “never”: recall how a much more talked-about issue of AHA credits was on everyone’s news last Fall, and yet it is still not decided one way or the other, and not even regularly discussed. By comparison, the chances that this eviction notice timing may ever get “noticed” are slim to none.

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