Last Thursday afternoon, one of my law school clinic students and I stood in the hallway outside an Indianapolis eviction court, talking hurriedly with a single dad who is raising five sons. He had long held a truck-loading job paying decent wages, but a few months ago he was injured and then missed several paychecks. After he fell behind on his rent, his landlord hired a lawyer, who was in the courtroom at that moment asking for the family to be evicted.

We walked the father through a document called the Eviction Protection Declaration. He checked off the appropriate boxes attesting that he was eligible for protection from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) moratorium on evictions, then he signed his name. We hustled down the hall and quickly filed the form with the court clerk. It seemed that the family’s housing was secure for a few more weeks, during which time the dad could catch up on the rent.

A few hours later, six justices of the US Supreme Court threw the whole family out in the street.