WASHINGTON — The Department of Housing and Urban Development is proposing to significantly raise the bar for civil rights groups seeking to prove that a landlord, insurance company or lender is guilty of housing discrimination.
The proposal, first revealed by Politico, would force civil rights groups to jump over five hurdles, instead of three, to demonstrate that a policy has had a discriminatory effect that violates the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which protects against discrimination. The proposal also maps out how landlords and other defendants can successfully fight back against those claims and states that the Fair Housing Act does not override state laws that regulate the business of insurance.
Civil rights groups have long used analyses of the effect of practices and policies to show that those practices and policies have harmed minority groups protected by federal civil rights laws. Such disparate analyses have been used to uncover discrimination in an era when racial prejudice and bigotry can be more subtle than in the past.
View the complete August 2 article by Lola Fadulu on The New York Times website here.