Punishing Housing Providers for Racial Imbalances They Didn ' t Cause Will Only Lead to More Racial Bias

The federal Fair Housing Act ( “FHA”) makes it unlawful to discriminate based on race (among other categories) in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. Four years ago, in a case calledTexas Department of Housing v. Inclusive Communities Project, the Supreme Court determined that the FHA allows certain claims based on “disparate impact”—meaning that tenants don’t need to prove discriminatory intent behind housing policies, only an adverse effect on members of their protected class, even if it was the unintended result of an otherwise neutral policy.Enter Waples Mobile Home Park in Fairfax County, Virginia. Waples rents primarily to Hispanic tenants, but, to avoid violating federal immigration policy, it requires all community residents to provide their social security numbers or otherwise show proof of legal immigration status. Several current and former tenants filed an FHA complaint against Waples, alleging that this policy has a racially disparate impact. Why? Because most undocumented people in Fairfax County are Hispanic.Although the trial court threw out the lawsuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit resurrected it. According to the court, a mere showing of statistical disparity is enough to establish a valid claim. But, as the Supreme Court inInclusive Communities emphasized, “[w]ithout adequate safeguards … disparate-impact liability might cause race to be used and considered in a pervasive way and ‘would almost inexorably lead’...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs