Carson Disparate Impact Rule Enjoined: In the first of three cases filed to challenge HUD’s undoing of the Fair Housing Act disparate impact standard, a federal district court judge has issued a preliminary injunction which prevents the rule from going into effect (the other pending cases were filed in federal courts in Connecticut and Northern California).
A Steady Habit of Segregation: As if the state of Connecticut has not received enough reminders already, Susan Eaton of the Sillerman Center at Brandeis University has published a detailed account of the state’s history of housing and school segregation in the Hartford region – a kind of localized version of Richard Rothstein’s book “The Color of Law.” Co-published by PRRAC, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Connecticut’s Open Communities Alliance, the new report, “A Steady Habit of Segregation” is a powerful complement to the Open Communities Alliance’s pending fair housing complaint against the State of Connecticut and its pending Administrative Procedure Act challenge to HUD’s disparate impact rule.
Next steps on school diversity: Last week, the Learning Policy Institute presented an excellent one-hour briefing on school diversity and inclusion (co-sponsored by the National Coalition on School Diversity) – you can watch the recording and download the slides here.
Other resources
Source of income discrimination studies: This week, the Urban Institute released a suite of new resources on discrimination against families with Housing Choice Vouchers. The first is a new legal dataset based on PRRAC’s compilation of state, city, and county SOI laws. The new dataset analyzes laws passed between 1971 and the end of 2019 and identifies key features that may influence their effectiveness. See “State and Local Voucher Protection Laws: Introducing a New Legal Dataset.”
The second study, “Protecting Housing Choice Voucher Holders from Discrimination: Lessons from Oregon and Texas,” presents case studies of two states that took different approaches to legal protections for people using Housing Choice Vouchers. In 2013, Oregon passed a law that prohibits discrimination against voucher holders statewide; two years later, Texas passed a preemption law that prevents local governments from adopting such protections. The brief describes and compares each state’s motivations in adopting the laws and the ways the laws have affected voucher program administration.
EPIC Theatre: Join the National Coalition on School Diversity for a free (virtual) performance of NOTHING ABOUT US, an original play about segregation by NY-based EPIC Theatre Ensemble, November 9 at 8:00 pm. RSVP here.
