Laura Gallagher waited until she was back in her car to cry.

The judge in her eviction case had just ruled against her. Her lease was up and her landlord wanted her out. In a few weeks, she and her 14-year-old son would have to move out of their Bucks County apartment and go - she didn’t know where.

Gallagher had gone to the court hearing with a vague sense that, after a series of eviction bans over the summer, tenants were protected until the end of the year. She wasn’t sure of the details. She remembers trying to ask the judge about it, but got nowhere.

“Standing in there, I felt like the dumbest person in the world,” Gallagher said.

With state moratoriums expiring and scores of people across the United States behind on their rent - including as many as 400,000 families in Pennsylvania - the Trump administration in September halted many evictions until the end of the year.

Under an order issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tenants who qualify cannot be evicted if they sign a declaration form and send it to their landlord.

“I want to make it unmistakably clear that I’m protecting people from evictions,” President Donald Trump said in a statement when the order was announced.

But in Pennsylvania, a Spotlight PA investigation found an inconsistent system of justice across the 67 counties, leaving many vulnerable residents without the protections they were promised.

All told, despite the federal order, whether or not families get kicked out of their homes often comes down to where they live, and which judge happens to hear their case.

Who decides?

Rather than establish a clear and robust standard, the state court system has largely left it to district judges to interpret the vague federal order, leading to starkly different outcomes from town to town and city to city.

A review of 10 eviction cases in nine counties found tenants - many of them already distraught by the prospect of losing their home, and confused by a string of ever-changing rules - face pitfalls at every turn and a bureaucratic system that doesn’t go out of its way to help.

Some tenants don’t know about the order at all, and neither judges nor landlords are required to tell them. Others think it applies automatically, like previous state and federal bans. A judge might decide the order doesn’t apply (even if it should), or a landlord might accuse a tenant of lying on the declaration form, leaving it up to a judge to decide.

These cases are unfolding on the lowest rung of Pennsylvania’s court system, in more than 500 local magisterial district courts that handle traffic violations, small claims cases, and criminal arraignments, as well as evictions. Landlords are more likely to have attorneys, to understand how the eviction process works - and to win.

The lack of clear statewide guidance “leaves magisterial district judges in a precarious position,” said Matt Rich, an attorney at MidPenn Legal Services, which covers 18 counties in central Pennsylvania.

“They’re left to read the order and figure out what it means and how they should be handling it on a daily basis,” Rich said. “That’s caused some problems, for sure.”

Even if Laura Gallagher had signed the CDC declaration form, it’s not clear whether she would have been covered. That’s because she wasn’t being evicted for not paying her rent.

Some landlords in Pennsylvania are successfully short-circuiting the CDC order. Instead of seeking an eviction because a tenant hasn’t paid rent - which is not allowed - landlords ask instead to remove the tenant because their lease has expired or been terminated.

The Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts says it’s up to judges to decipher the ambiguities in the federal order. But the limited guidance it has issued says the order only prohibits evictions for nonpayment of rent.

Losing homes

Those losing their homes face an increasingly dangerous situation. With the black mark of an eviction on their record, it will be harder to find another place to live, just as winter approaches and the coronavirus is surging again in Pennsylvania. New daily confirmed cases are at all-time highs. The percentage of tests coming back positive and the number of hospitalizations are rising at their fastest rates in months.

For Gallagher, the days after the hearing were a blur. She called friends, scrambling to find a place to go. She tried to find out if she would qualify for public housing. She packed a bag of essentials: clothes, dog food, and medication for her rheumatoid arthritis.

When she found a piece of paper taped to her door, she knew exactly what it was: the start of the countdown to the final stage of the eviction process, when Bucks County constables would come to remove them.

The day before they were due to be evicted, she still wasn’t sure where they would go.

Finally, on Oct. 15, the constable came to lock them out.

Bearing the burden

For almost six months, most tenants in Pennsylvania were safe from eviction under a series of orders from the state Supreme Court and, later, from Wolf. But the same day the state ban was set to expire, the CDC announced its order, sowing confusion.

The federal order extends some of the same protections, but with one major difference: It doesn’t apply automatically. Tenants must know about and send a declaration form to their landlord on their own. If they don’t, they could slip through the cracks.

The CDC said the ban was necessary to stave off a wave of evictions that would accelerate the spread of the coronavirus, offering many tenants a lifeline, however temporary. Rent is still due and late fees are piling up. Without direct cash assistance, many will never catch up.

To qualify under the CDC order, tenants must be unable to pay their full rent because of a “substantial” loss of income, reduced work hours or wages, or “extraordinary out-of-pocket medical expenses.” They must also declare they have made “best efforts” to pay as much rent as possible and to obtain government rental assistance. And they must certify that, if evicted, they would probably become homeless, be forced to go to a shelter, or live in cramped conditions with other people.

Confusion

There has been confusion over how to interpret the CDC order from the start.

Dauphin and Blair counties instruct magisterial district judges not to try to determine whether a tenant has been truthful in signing a declaration, which has the weight of sworn testimony. Others, such as Lehigh and Philadelphia, say they can. Legal aid attorneys contend holding hearings to determine whether a tenant has been truthful is unfair, given the CDC order’s vague language on “best efforts” to pay rent and seek government help.

Tenants’ attorneys themselves have different views on what a tenant must do to meet the “best efforts” standard. Some urge clients to be cautious, advising them they should have already submitted an application for rental assistance before submitting the form. Others argue a quick phone call to ask about an aid program would be enough.

Pennsylvania set aside $150 million in federal funding for rent relief paid directly to landlords, many of whom are also struggling financially. But the program has been plagued by problems from the start, and state Senate Republicans recently killed a last-ditch effort to fix it.

Greater Harrisburg Tenants United said in an open letter to President Judge John Cherry, “An unprecedented housing crisis is unfolding - there is no room for ambiguity,” they wrote.

A gaping loophole

When Stacey Horrocks signed the CDC declaration form, she didn’t realize she was wading into one of the thorniest legal disputes over how the order should be interpreted.

The disagreement boils down to five words in a memo written by Geoff Moulton, the state court administrator, and shared with local judges. The federal order, he wrote, prevents evictions “only for non-payment of rent.”

Most counties that issued local orders have echoed this language.

That leaves tenants like Horrocks, who was on a month-to-month lease, vulnerable. She fell behind on rent in the spring, after money from her divorce settlement dried up. She said she has chronic illnesses and has not been able to work for years. Once the coronavirus hit, she was terrified of leaving the house.

In text messages, her landlord urged her to get a job and said Walmart was hiring. Horrocks apologized. She said she was at high risk for COVID-19 and trying her best to figure things out.

Horrocks’ landlord said she had a property tax bill coming due and was frustrated: “You haven’t paid rent for two months and now the third month is coming round the corner for god sake I can’t do this.”

At the end of May, Horrocks received a letter saying that her month-to-month lease was being terminated and she had to leave by July 1.

In early September, she signed the CDC form and sent it to her landlord, saving the green certified mail slip as proof.

Tenant advocates argue that the state’s guidance - “only for non-payment of rent” - goes beyond what the CDC order actually says, giving judges more leeway to deny its protections to “holdover” tenants like Horrocks, whose leases have expired. By contrast, the state eviction bans ordered by the governor explicitly covered holdover tenants.

A Berks County judge ruled that Horrocks could be evicted even though she had submitted the CDC declaration, since her landlord had terminated her lease over the summer.

By the time of the hearing, Horrocks owed more than $6,000.

With the help of a legal aid attorney, Horrocks is appealing the judge’s decision, which will buy her some time. Eventually, however, she will almost certainly have to pay rent to the court in order to be able to stay in the apartment while the appeal moves forward - money she says she does not have.

Last month, when she arrived home from a local copy store after scanning the paperwork for the appeal and sending it to her attorney, she found a “for rent” sign stuck into the grass in her front yard.

Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters.