This story, in slightly different form, originally appeared in the New York Law Journal.

NEW YORK CITY-The US Supreme Court announced on April 23 that it will not hear a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of New York City's rent-stabilization law.

The case, Harmon v. Kimmel, 11-496, was filed against the city in 2008 by James Harmon and his wife, Jeanne. The couple owns an Upper West Side brownstone with six apartments, of which three are rent stabilized. The Harmons argued that the 1969 rent-stabilization law, intended to respond to a housing shortage, was an unconstitutional taking of their property.

Southern District Judge Barbara Jones dismissed the case in February 2010, and Judges Amalya Kearse, Robert Sack and Robert Katzmann of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal in March 2011. The Supreme Court's refusal to hear an appeal marks the end of the case.

"We are pleased that the Supreme Court will allow the existing court rulings dismissing this case to stand," Alan Krams, senior counsel in the Appeals Division of the Corporation Counsel's office, says in a statement. "Rent regulation in New York City has a long history, and the Court properly left it to elected state and city officials to decide its future."

James Harmon says in an e-mail that the Harmon family was disappointed in the court's denial of cert. "We still believe that the Constitution does not allow the government to force us to take strangers into our home at our expense for life. Even our grandchildren have been barred from living with us. That is not our America."

"We are deeply disappointed that the United States Supreme Court did not accept what we believe to be relevant and legitimate property rights concerns of all New York City rent-regulated property owners, who have endured 70 years of rent regulation in one form or another," Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which filed an amicus brief on the Harmons' side, says in a statement.