A 2024 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found that Baltimore’s ordinance on tenants’ property left behind after an eviction violated a woman’s due-process rights because she had not been told her belongings would be treated as abandoned, according to the court’s decision. A state law that took effect in October 2025 created a six-day notice period before eviction. The Daily Record reports that a Baltimore law department memo says the change makes the provisions challenged in the lawsuit moot.
The proposed agreement
Baltimore officials are asking U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby to approve an $11 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit over tenants’ belongings removed after eviction, The Daily Record reports. The proposed agreement would provide an automatic payment of at least $800 to an estimated 4,000 people. Those able to document the loss of valuable property could seek up to $30,000.
The class includes named defendants evicted under a warrant of restitution in specified tenant-holding-over, breach-of-lease, wrongful-detainer or forcible-entry-and-detainer cases from March 6, 2020, through October 1, 2025, according to the same report. The city would make three payments into the settlement fund: $3.4 million as early as next March after final approval, another $3.4 million later in 2027, and more than $4.2 million by 2028.
The lawsuit’s claims
Iesha and Embria Henriques sued Baltimore and their former landlord in 2022. The Daily Record reports that they said an eviction left them without medications, school uniforms and an urn containing a relative’s ashes. Under the proposed agreement, each would receive $10,000. The settlement would not resolve claims against the former landlord, Tiffany Morris, who is in default and has not participated in the case since 2022, the outlet reports.
The city’s lawyers deny the allegations and maintain that the ordinance is lawful, according to The Daily Record. Joseph Mack, the Henriques’ attorney who also represented plaintiffs in the related Fourth Circuit case, declined to comment to the outlet.
