Lawsuit Challenges HUD’s Rollback Of Key Fair Housing Rule

A coalition of fair housing advocates has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over the recent reversal of long-standing fair housing protections. 

The suit challenges HUD’s new disparate impact rule, which would make it more difficult for victims of discrimination to fight against systemic racism and discriminatory policies by housing providers, financial institutions and insurance companies that deprive people of the opportunities and services they need. 

The Trump administration rewrote the 2013 disparate impact rule adopted by the Obama administration, which included the standard approach to claims using this civil rights enforcement tool. 

Fair housing advocates say the rule has been in place for almost 50 years to tackle structural barriers that unfairly lock people out of the housing and lending opportunities they deserve. The plaintiffs say the new rule is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to strip away protections for vulnerable communities. 

“We will not let the Trump administration get away with its disastrous decision to strip civil rights protections from people who need it most,” said Lisa Rice, president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA). “The disparate impact tool is critical for challenging systemic barriers that block too many people from the housing and lending opportunities they deserve. It is also essential for tackling bias in the technologies used to determine who can rent an apartment, get a mortgage loan or insure a home. This new rule goes back on everything the Fair Housing Act was created to address.”

The lawsuit was filed by NFHA, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, and BLDS, a Philadelphia consulting firm. It asserts that the Trump administration acted improperly in implementing the final disparate impact rule.

The complaint alleges that HUD violated the Administrative Procedures Act by taking final agency action that is arbitrary and capricious, is in excess of statutory authority, and is not in accordance with law. 

“We are deeply disappointed in HUD’s final disparate impact rule and its radical revision of the previous 2013 rule,” said Caroline Peattie, executive director of Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California. “Our agency will be hobbled in its effort to assist clients who desperately need our help — families with children who are faced with eviction or are barred from accessing housing because of restrictive occupancy or other discriminatory rules, domestic violence survivors facing eviction due to unfair policies that disproportionately affect women, people of color who are negatively impacted by restrictive housing policies barring people with criminal histories, and others.”

Peattie added, “It will have a chilling effect on the willingness of our already vulnerable clients to come forward with a housing discrimination complaint when the burden of proving discrimination exists now appears insurmountable. In short, this is a rule that should not stand.”

Among other allegations, the complaint alleges that the final rule is not a product of reasoned decision-making and will undermine the purposes of the Fair Housing Act. The complaint also alleges that HUD failed to respond adequately to the public comments submitted in response to the proposed rule.

“HUD’s decision last month to upend the longstanding disparate impact rule is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to undermine decades of progress toward making our country more equal,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “With this lawsuit, LDF seeks to stop the explicit effort by this president to revive and reinforce practices that promote racial segregation and to strip the Fair Housing Act of its power.” 

“The conservative movement to weaken the Fair Housing Act was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2015,” added Ifill. “The Trump administration now cynically seeks to use that decision to justify its effort to do by agency rulemaking what it could not convince a majority of the court to do.”