Disparate impact: Today, PRRAC joined the legal effort to reverse the Trump Administration’s twisted interpretation of the Fair Housing Act’s disparate impact standard. The new HUD rule, which officially goes into effect next week, invents a series of new hurdles for victims of discrimination at the pleading stage as well as adding unprecedented new defenses, making it virtually impossible to prevail on a disparate impact claim, at least for complaints filed at HUD. Most egregiously, the rule eliminates “perpetuation of segregation” as a basis for liability under the Act. The plaintiffs include the Open Communities Alliance (CT) and SouthCoast Fair Housing (MA), represented by lawyers from the ACLU, Lawyers Committee, PRRAC, and Cohen & Milstein (a separate case was also filed today by the National Fair Housing Alliance and other groups). See the OCA v. HUD complaint here, our press release here, and press coverage here.
Housing Mobility Conference: We have received several inquiries about our previously scheduled national housing mobility conference in November. Yes, it has been canceled, and we are tentatively planning a virtual conference in the spring – stay tuned!
Other Resources
Undoing exclusionary zoning: The Urban Institute has been rolling out a series of helpful policy proposals for the next administration, including this recent piece on exclusionary zoning.
