Fair Housing History

Indigenous peoples lived in the Americas and what is currently called the United States as early as 5000 BCE. Initiated by these early settlers, the United States became established in the East and colonized the continent through land grabs and genocide. Following a belief in Manifest Destiny, these efforts led the settler colonials all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

At IFHC we recognize that these land grabs as well as the removal of people from their homes because of their race, religion, color, etc. are violations of the Fair Housing Act and therefore, the very first Fair Housing violation in the United States was the violent removal of Indigenous people from their land.​

📍 Lands of the Shoshone-Bannock, Nimiipuu, Lemhi-Shoshone, and Schitsu’umsh​

Find out whose land you are on: https://native-land.ca/

From 1492 into the 20th Century, Europeans have displaced and killed Indigenous people through war, violence, disease and enslavement. From the 15th Century onward, Indigenous people fought colonization, destruction and genocide of their people, language, culture, land, water and resources.

The first African people to reach the English colonies arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. Dutch traders seized the enslaved people from a captured Spanish slave ship. European colonizers continued enslaving Africans until about 1865.

The United States became an independent nation despite the Indigenous nations that already existed within the Americas.

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the British gave the Indigenous people’s lands to the U.S. government.

Under President Andrew Jackson, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act removing Indigenous people from their land and forcing them onto reservations throughout the 1800s.

“It didn’t matter if you were a U.S. citizen, it didn’t matter if you were born as an American, all that mattered was that your skin color was dark… and therefore you were seen as a threat because of Pearl Harbor.”

– Emily Tani-Winegarden, Grand Daughter of Tad and Yoshi Tani who were both Incarcerated at the Minidoka Internment Camp in Southern Idaho

In one of the United States’ greatest Fair Housing violations, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 which sentenced nearly 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans to incarceration in internment camps for the following 2-4 years. Over two-thirds of the people of Japanese ethnicity who were incarcerated — almost 70,000 — were American citizens. Many of the rest had lived in the country between 20 and 40 years.

No Japanese-American citizen or Japanese national residing in the United States was ever found guilty of sabotage or espionage.

In December 1982, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians concluded that the incarceration of Japanese Americans had not been justified by military necessity. The report determined that the decision to incarcerate was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

Signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur, the Chinese Exclusion Act implemented mass discrimination against Chinese people and Chinese-Americans and prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers. The Act was not repealed until 1943.

Signed by President Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation granted freedom to all enslaved people held in states that had seceded from the Union.

Abolitionists compelled Congress to establish a banking system for people of color and particularly Black soldiers who had no place to keep their Union Army compensation. To support the land grants and other elements of the Freedman’s Bureau Act, President Lincoln established the Freedman’s Bank on March 8, 1865 so that formerly enslaved Black Americans might navigate their financial lives. President Lincoln was assassinated five weeks later.

The Freedman’s Bank was a separate and unequal financial system. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency did not regulate the Freedman’s Bank. It was instead, supervised by a Board of Trustees largely comprised of Wall Street investors and real estate moguls, some of whom stole the depositors’ savings for their own purposes.

President Andrew Johnson declares the Civil War over.

The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States on December 6, 1865. While there were thousands of free Black people in the U.S., most were enslaved without the right to purchase property, enter into contracts, or exercise many other freedoms enjoyed by White citizens.

The Black Codes were laws passed by many states after the Civil War with the intent and the effect of restricting African- Americans’ freedom.

On April 9, 1866, the Civil Rights Act guaranteed equal rights under the law. “All citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by White citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.” The courts interpreted the law to prohibit public or governmental discrimination only.

The U.S. Constitution was amended, ratified in 1868, granting citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves, and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.” (See next panel for further info.)

During the Reconstruction Era, the Homestead Act of 1862 was amended in 1872 to prohibit making a “distinction on account of race or color” in the issuance of Homestead grants thereby opening up the program to settle western lands in the U.S. to those who were not White.

Mismanagement and outright fraud by white senior leaders weakened the bank significantly. Politician Henry D. Cooke approved unsecured loans to his own business while on the bank’s board; he ultimately could not pay back the loans, went bankrupt, and the bank was devastated.

In 1872 U.S. Congress voted to permanently close the Freedman’s Bureau. The Bank however remained operational and in March of 1874 Frederick Douglass became the last president of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company.

In a desperate attempt to stabilize the Bank, Douglass invested $10,000 of his own money. Still, in June of 1874 the bank failed against the backdrop of the racially motivated political forces that undermined Reconstruction.

The 61,000 people who had deposited $3 million (over $63 million in today’s dollars) into the system lost what they had when the bank closed.

On January 7, 2016, the Treasury Annex Building in Washington DC was publicly renamed The Freedman’s Bank Building by Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, in honor of the site where the Freedman’s Saving Bank once stood.

“The failure of this bank has done more to harm the future of freed black slaves than 10 additional years of slavery.”

– Frederick Douglass, African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, statesman and President of the Freedmans Savings and Trust co

The Compromise of 1877 began allowing for the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as President of the United States. As a part of the Compromise, Republicans agreed to withdraw the remaining federal troops from the South. As a result, a succession of segregationist policies and Jim Crow laws were implemented creating systems of de facto and de jure slavery and segregation.

Plessy vs. Ferguson opened the door for institutionalized segregation known as the “separate but equal” doctrine that legalized segregation.

The National Association of Real Estate Board’s Code of Ethics Prohibits Integration. Under Article 34 of Part III of the Code of Ethics, the guiding document for all real estate professionals in the U.S., stated “A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.”

In spite of the fact that they were here before colonizing Europeans arrived and stole their land, Indigenous people were granted citizenship in the United States in 1924.

Real estate expert, Frederick M. Babcock, who helped start the Federal Housing Administration, wrote his racist segregationist housing valuation policy in The Valuation of Real Estate. He suggested that declines in property values could be “partially avoided by segregation and this device has always been in common usage in the South where White and Negro populations have been separated.”

Homer Hoyt, the first Principal Housing Economist for the Federal Housing Administration, perfected a system of ranking races and nationalities in order to illustrate their beneficial effect or negative impact on land values with groups more favorable listed at the top (Western Europeans) and groups less favorable being listed at the bottom (Blacks, Italians and Mexicans).

Established in 1933, this institution helped segregate the United States through housing loans. The HOLC Loan Corporation specified race and immigrant status as considerations, and agency records showed that from 1933 to 1936, the period it was authorized to issue loans, 44% of its help went to areas designated “native White,” 42% to “native White and foreign,” and only 1% to “Negro.”

From 1934 to 1968, the Federal Housing Administration’s housing policies created the segregated system of housing as we know it. The FHA made homeownership accessible to White people by guaranteeing their loans, but explicitly refused to back loans to Black people or even other people who lived near Black people. FHA and its other actors’ (lenders, realtors, insurers, etc.) Redlining destroyed the possibility of investment wherever Black people lived.

Frederick Babcock and Homer Hoyt are credited with establishing the first Underwriting Manual for FHA. The Manual promoted racial segregation touting the use of racially restrictive covenants to guarantee the most “favorable condition” for neighborhoods. The Manual stated that deed restrictions should include a “prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended,” and that “inharmonious racial groups” and “incompatible racial elements” would cause the devaluation of a neighborhood.

Commonly referred to simply as the “Green Book” it was an annual, segregation-era guidebook for African-American motorists, published by Hackensack, New Jersey letter carrier turned New York travel agent Victor H. Green between 1936 and 1966. During the Jim Crow era road trips for African- Americans were fraught with dangers in the overtly racist context of racial segregation, racial profiling by police as well as the general White population, the common phenomenon of travelers “disappearing,” and the existence of numerous sundown towns.

The 1943 immigration laws established a quota on Chinese immigrants (105 a year), which was not lifted until the 1965 Immigration Act.

Upon realizing that separate does NOT mean equal, the courts overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson and outlawed school segregation.

Executive Order 11063: Titled “Equal Opportunity in Housing” and issued by President Kennedy prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, or use of all residential property that was owned, operated, or financed by the federal government. It had little impact because it did not provide for enforcement.

“My fellow citizens, we have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail. Let us close the springs of racial poison. Let us pray for wise and understanding hearts. Let us lay aside irrelevant differences and make our nation whole.”

– President Lyndon B. Johnson

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. It was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.

One year prior, in a nationally televised address on June 6, 1963, former President John F. Kennedy had urged the nation to take action toward guaranteeing equal treatment of every American regardless of race.

Kennedy then proposed that Congress consider civil rights legislation that would address voting rights, public accommodations, school desegregation, nondiscrimination in federally assisted programs, and more.

Despite Kennedy’s assassination in November of 1963, his proposal culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law just a few hours after it was passed by Congress on July 2, 1964.

This act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting.

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 is a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court which struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage.

On July 28, 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson constituted the Kerner Commission to identify the genesis of the violent 1967 riots that killed 43 in Detroit and 26 in Newark while causing fewer casualties in 23 other cities.

Many Americans blamed the riots on outside agitators or young Black men, who represented the largest and most visible group of rioters. But, in March 1968, the Kerner Commission turned those assumptions upside-down, declaring white racism—not Black anger—turned the key that unlocked urban American turmoil.

“Commonly sparked by repressive and violent police actions, urban uprisings were political acts of self-defense and racial liberation on a mass, public scale. Legislative successes at the federal level with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were not reflected in the daily lives of African-Americans facing police misconduct, economic inequality, segregated housing, and inferior educations.”

– William S. Pretzer, Senior Curator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture

In February of 1968, two Black garbage collectors were crushed by a malfunctioning truck in Memphis. Frustrated by the city’s response to the latest event in a long pattern of neglect and abuse of its Black employees, 1,300 Black sanitation workers went on strike.

The strikes continued for months and Dr. King visited multiple times to help organize non-violent protests and encourage compromise on the part of city officials. He was visiting Memphis at the time of his assassination on April 4, 1968.

On April 8, an estimated 42,000 people (led by Coretta Scott King, union leaders and the Southern Christian Leaderships Conference) silently marched through Memphis in honor of King, demanding that the Mayor give in to the union’s requests.

On April 16, Memphis City Council finally recognized the union and agreed to guarantee a better wage. Although the deal ended the strike, it was not until the union threatened to strike again several months later that the city ultimately followed through with its commitment.

We recognize The Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strikes of 1968 as a foundational moment in the movement to combat what is now referred to as Environmental Racism.

“Our society must come to respect the sanitation worker. He is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn’t do his job, disease is rampant.”

– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., A Speech given to protestors and Striking sanitation workers at the mason temple in Memphis on march 23, 1968

President Johnson signed into law the Fair Housing Act of 1968 as a way to urge unity and peace and quell racial tensions. The law prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin.

Jones v. Mayer. A landmark United States Supreme Court case which held that Congress could regulate the sale of private property in order to prevent racial discrimination.

Trafficante v Metropolitan Life Insurance, The U.S. Supreme Court offered important judicial guidance on interpreting the Fair Housing Act, ruling that current tenants in a large apartment complex had standing to sue their landlord for discrimination against minority applicants; it also established four tenets of statutory construction: (1) the statute should be construed broadly; (2) integration is an important goal of the FHA; (3) courts may, in appropriate cases, rely on case law under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (prohibiting discrim- ination in employment) to help interpret the FHA; and (4) HUD interpretations of the FHA are entitled to substantial weight.

Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act was the first disability civil rights law to be enacted in the United States. It prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in programs that receive federal financial assistance and set the stage for enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Sex is added as a protected status to the Fair Housing Act.

Hills v. Gautreaux. The Supreme Court ruled HUD can be ordered to adopt a housing assistance plan that ignores municipal boundaries. After knowingly funding the Chicago Housing Authority’s racially discriminatory housing program, HUD was ordered to alleviate the effects of these past practices by developing public housing in desegregated neighborhoods. As a result, eligible families were given Section 8 housing vouchers, which they used to pay for private rental apartments in neighborhoods less than 30% African-American.

Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman. This case was brought by a group of complainants, including a prospective renter, two testers, and a fair housing organization. This landmark Supreme Court decision provided standing to both testers and fair housing organizations, and ultimately leading to the re-invigorations/formation of scores of private groups. The Court held that fair housing organizations had standing to sue because the owner’s racial steering practices impaired the fair housing organizations’ ability to provide housing counseling and referral services.

Shellhammer v. Lewallen (6th Circ.) Shellhammer was the first federal case to hold that sexual harassment in housing violates the FHA. The owner of the tenant’s building asked her to pose for nude photos. When she refused, she and her husband were evicted. The district court found the eviction was in response to the tenant’s rejection and the owner’s conduct constituted quid pro quo sexual harassment.

U.S. v. Yonkers (2nd Cir.) A landmark decision simultaneously finding that Yonkers and Yonkers Public Schools intentionally segregated housing and schools, based on race, for 40 years. This case was unique because it merged housing and school desegreg- ation claims on the assumption that housing segregation is at the core of school segregation.

Founded and headquartered in Washington DC, the NFHA is the only national organization dedicated solely to ending discrimination in housing.

Under President Reagan, the amendment extends protection to families with children (familial status) and to persons with physical and mental disabilities and endowed the law with powerful enforcement mechanisms.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. § 12101) is signed into law by President George H. W. Bush.

Since 1994 IFHC has filed more than 168 design and construction complaints, likely the main factor in motivating the Idaho legislature to incorporate the International Building Code requirements into the statewide building code to ensure that new covered multi-family housing complies with the FHA’s design and construction requirements.

Olmstead v. L.C. The Olmstead case was brought by two women with disabilities who were institutionalized and denied access to housing in the community.

Department of Housing and Urban Development issued guidance for making sure people who are Limited English Proficient have access to critical housing services. “Final Guidance to Federal Financial Assistance Recipients Regarding Title VI Prohibition Against National Origin Discrimination Affecting Limited English Proficient Persons,” 72 Fed. Reg. 2732.

The National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity issues a fair housing report. Chaired by Henry Cisneros and Jack Kemp, the commission issued “The Future of Fair Housing” report, which detailed the findings of a national, bipartisan fair housing commission to investigate the state of housing discrimination and segregation 40 years after passage of the Fair Housing Act.

Signed into law by President George W. Bush, the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act clarified and broadened the term “disability.”

U.S. ex rel. Anti-Discrimination Center v. Westchester County. The importance of local and state government fair housing compliance was made evident with a landmark $62.5 million settlement. Westchester promised to integrate the predominantly White Westchester County and failed to do so while certifying it was while receiving HUD and other federal funds.

In 2009 hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity are included as punishable by federal law.

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportu- nity issued a regulation to prohibit LGBT discrimination in federally-assisted housing programs. The new regulations ensure that the Department’s core housing programs are open
to all eligible persons, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. In the United States at least 22 states and many major cities have enacted laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

USDA, “Guidance to Federal Financial Assistance Recipients Regarding the Title VI Prohibition Against National Origin Discrimination Affecting Persons with Limited English Proficiency,” 79 Fed. Reg. 70,771. Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency (LEP),” the guidance clarifies the obligations of entities that receive federal financial assistance from USDA. It provides guidance for USDA recipients in meeting their existing obligations to provide meaningful access for LEP persons.

On June 5, 2015, in a 5-4 split, the US Supreme Court held that disparate-impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act.​

The Court reaffirmed the consistent finding of the federal courts over the past four decades that the Fair Housing Act bars not only intentional discrimination, but also policies that have an unwarranted disparate impact. ​

Courts have consistently recognized that policies and practices that unnecessarily limit housing opportunities or otherwise perpetuate segregation because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, or familial status violate the Fair Housing Act.​

Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project. In Texas the Supreme Court upheld the government’s obligation to affirmatively further fair housing when policies result in disparate impacts. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision written by Justice Kennedy, upheld the disparate impact doctrine under the Fair Housing Act. This precedent-setting opinion affirmed both 40 years of legal jurisprudence and the decisions of 11 U.S. appellate courts in holding that disparate impact is cognizable under the Fair Housing Act.

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that states must license and recognize same-sex marriages. Consequently, same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands.

“This is the most important moment, I believe, for fair housing since 1968, and we must use it to maximum advantage. This summer, because of Inclusive Communities and HUD’s [AFFH] rule, we stand for the first time in nearly 50 years with new laws and new energy that can make a difference…that can attack these barriers effectively.”

– Walter S. Mondale, remarks delivered at HUD’s National Fair Housing Training and Policy Conference, September 1, 2015.

On April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, Walter Mondale, then one of the youngest members of the United States Senate, took the floor of the chamber and declared, “The foremost proponent of a nonviolent confrontation between the races is dead. His generosity to the white man, his belief in the basic goodwill of all men, and his dramatic, nonviolent action enabled him to speak to both races.” Mondale, then a 40-year-old Democrat had emerged as one of the chamber’s most ardent advocates for civil rights.

A housing provider violates the Fair Housing Act when the provider’s policy or practice has an unjustified discriminatory effect, even when the provider had no intent to discriminate. Under this standard, a facially-neutral policy or practice that has a discriminatory effect violates the Act if it is not supported by a legally sufficient justification.

The FHA protects community members regardless of alienage based on the seven protected classes. Immigration policies toward migrants, asylum seekers, non-citizens, DACA community members, and people affected by the Muslim Ban have created a discriminatory and hostile environment toward community members based on national origin and religion in our communities.

The FHA has continued to receive a broad and expansive interpretation of its protections by the courts throughout 50 years of existence.

A Hindu resident filed a religious discrimination lawsuit against a Philadelphia condo association. A Hindu symbol is at the heart of a Fair Housing lawsuit, continuing the latest trend of religious rights lawsuits involving HOAs and condominium associations.

Source: https://independentamericancommunities.com/2018/05/07/former-u-of-penn-professor-files-religious-discrimination-lawsuit-against-philadelphia-condo-association/

The Fair Housing Improvement Act was introduced to the Senate by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Tim Kaine (D-VA). The bill aimed to protect low income families and veterans from housing discrimination based on a person’s source of income and veteran status.

Ten states and the District of Columbia already have non-discrimination protections for housing voucher holders. However, Fair Housing research indicates that this is not nearly adequate on a federal level.

The Fair Housing Improvement Act (S.3612) was referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in 2018 and has idled there with little activity ever since.

The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), Communications Workers of America (CWA), several regional fair housing organizations, and individual consumers and job seekers settled civil rights claims against Facebook.

NFHA and the other plaintiffs asserted that Facebook’s advertising platform contained pre-populated lists that allowed advertisers to place housing, employment, and credit ads that could exclude certain groups protected by the Fair Housing Act, such as African Americans, Latinx, and Asian Americans.

Because of the settlement, Facebook has agreed to establish a separate advertising portal for advertisers seeking to create housing, employment, and credit ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.

Housing advertisers will no longer be allowed to target consumers based on race, ethnicity, color, national origin, gender, age, religion, family status, disability, or sexual orientation. Housing advertisers will also be prevented from advertising based on ZIP code.

“Every year, April is the time we honor history’s fair housing heroes and celebrate our nation’s civil rights progress. Though our national attention is now fiercely focused on overcoming the public health threat of COVID-19, the principle and promise of Fair Housing for All must still guide us,” said HUD Secretary Ben Carson. “There’s a fair housing hero in all of us…in the kindness and care toward a vulnerable neighbor, in the compassion and empathy for those who have contracted the virus, in the celebration of the tireless caregivers serving on the front line of the disease, and in the simple sacrifice made by the rest of us to stay home, stay safe and slow the spread.”

During this national emergency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to remind housing providers and the public at large of important federal fair housing laws that protect persons from discrimination, including harassment and intimidation, in housing and related services on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, and disability. The Fair Housing Act and other federal, state, and local laws collectively prohibit discrimination in nearly all housing transactions and residential settings across the nation, including rental housing, nursing homes, permanent shelters, and other places where people live and receive services together.

Source: https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/FHEO/documents/secretary%20fh%20statement%20covid-19%204.3.20.pdf

Following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of several Minneapolis Police Officers, social justice groups including many Fair Housing organizations across the country issued statements on the intersection of police brutality and the civil rights act, of which the FHA is part. The Fair Housing Justice Center, based in NYC issued the following statement:

“The Fair Housing Justice Center (FHJC) condemns the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Jamar Clark, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice and many others who have lost their lives through police violence. We stand in solidarity with all those around the world who protest for racial justice. We unequivocally believe that BLACK LIVES MATTER The violent mistreatment of Black people by the police and their disproportionate number of deaths from the COVID-19 virus glaringly reflect the deeper structural and institutional racism that afflicts our society in all aspects of life. Across the board, Black and Brown communities are over-policed and under-served, with unequal access to quality health care, nutrition, schools, jobs, and public transportation. African American home seekers still face significant barriers when searching for housing. New York City — heralded as a progressive bastion — ranks as the nation’s 3rd most residentially segregated area for African Americans and it has the most racially segregated school system in the nation.”

Source: https://www.fairhousingjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/FHJC-Justice-for-Black-Lives-Statement.pdf

The plaintiff, Gerald Bostock, was fired from his county job after he expressed interest in a gay softball league at work. The lower courts followed the Eleventh Circuit‘s past precedent that Title VII did not cover employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. The case was consolidated with Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda, a similar case of apparent discrimination due to sexual orientation from the Second Circuit, but which had added to a circuit split. Oral arguments were heard on October 8, 2019, alongside R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a similar question of Title VII discrimination relating to transgender persons.

On June 15, 2020, the Court ruled in a 6–3 decision covering all three cases that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is necessarily also discrimination “because of sex” as prohibited by Title VII. According to Justice Neil Gorsuch‘s majority opinion, that is so because employers discriminating against gay or transgender employees accept a certain conduct (e.g., attraction to women) in employees of one sex but not in employees of the other sex.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bostock_v._Clayton_County

For the first time, NAR offers a full-on apology for racist practices of the past and vows to keep working to correct lasting inequities in housing. In 2018, during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, the National Association of REALTORS® laid bare its painful past in perpetuating housing discrimination across America. While the leadership team acknowledged at the time that the organization had been “on the wrong side of history” and vowed to work harder to treat all home buyers and sellers equitably, the sentiments stopped short of a full-on apology.

Discriminatory practices weren’t just tolerated for many years—they were baked into the association’s guiding principles for much of the 20th century. This passage from the Code of Ethics, added in 1924, was revised over the years but not fully repealed until 1974:

REALTORS® “should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood … members of any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.”

Source: https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/commentary/an-apology-from-the-national-association-of-realtors

On his first day of office in January 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order banning discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, an Executive Order promoting racial equity, and a memorandum redressing the federal government’s history of discriminatory practices and policies. In Executive Order 13985, titled “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” President Biden also revoked President Trump’s Executive Order that prohibited, among other things, federal contractors from providing workforce diversity and anti-sexism and anti-racism training programs.

On June 1, 2021, the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, President Biden announced the creation of an interagency initiative to combat bias in home valuations. President Biden directed the PAVE Task Force to (1) evaluate the causes, extent, and consequences of appraisal bias, and (2) establish a transformative set of recommendations to root out racial and ethnic bias in home valuations.

PAVE is a first-of-its-kind interagency task force dedicated to ending discrimination in home valuations. The task force includes 13 federal agencies and offices and is chaired by Director of the Domestic Policy Council Ambassador Susan E. Rice and the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia L. Fudge.

Source: https://pave.hud.gov/

On June 10, 2022, Demetria L. McCain, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (“FHEO”) issued a memorandum setting out a detailed framework for the Office of FHEO, Fair Housing Assistance Programs (“FHAPs” and Fair Housing Initiatives Programs” to use in their investigation and analysis of whether criminal background screening policies comply with the requirements of the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”).

Source: https://www.fairhousingnc.org/newsletter/hud-gives-further-guidance-on-criminal-background-screening/

On September 15, 2022 Relman Colfax filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on behalf of a coalition of civil rights organizations and non-profit housing providers in support of the Plaintiffs–Appellants in Reyes v. Waples Mobile Home Park (No. 22-1660). The case alleges discrimination claims on behalf of four Latino immigrant families who were forced from their homes when their landlord began enforcing a policy requiring all adult residents to provide documentation of legal immigration status.

The appeal involved whether the defendants could show a “business necessity” for their policy of denying residents the ability to live in the park due to immigration status. The defendants had argued that they would be at risk of breaking a federal anti-harboring statute by allowing them to reside in their park, but the Court of Appeals firmly rejected that argument, finding that the statute did not apply in these circumstances. Simply renting does not constitute illegal “harboring” – which, the opinion notes, “makes good sense:”

In November 2022, the United States Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division opened an investigation into RealPage, which is accused of contributing to higher rent prices throughout the United States. The company’s Yield Star software uses an algorithm to “help landlords push the highest possible rents on tenants.” Civil rights groups are investigating them for redlining or restricting or giving worse terms (higher interest rates, fees) financial and other services to residents of area based on their race or other protected class.

Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent

On November 15, 2022, the United States filed a statement of interest which explained that damages may be available to private litigants pursuing land use claims against municipal defendants under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (“RLUIPA”) because of the finding that Troy violated RLUIPA by (1) imposing an unjustified substantial burden on Adam Community Center’s exercise of religion in its effort to operate a mosque and (2) requiring places of worship to abide by more onerous zoning restrictions than places of nonreligious assembly.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/crt/recent-accomplishments-housing-and-civil-enforcement-section

In February 2023, HUD issued a proposed Affirmatively Further Fair Housing regulation for public comment. For the first time, the proposed rule provided for an administrative complaint procedure to enforce the AFFH requirement. Giving the public the ability to submit complaints to HUD in cases where a grantee, such as a local or state government, has failed to comply with the requirements of the AFFH rule, failed to comply with the commitments it has made under the rule, or has taken action materially inconsistent with its obligation to affirmatively further fair housing, is a critical provision that must be enforced by HUD.

On February 21, 2023, the City of Seattle, Washington became the first U.S. city – or any U.S. jurisdiction for that matter – to add caste to its list of categories protected against discrimination. Caste system discrimination occurs when someone is excluded because of their castes’ social standing. Within a system that has such designations, people inherit their caste position through family descent. In the Hindu caste system, people are put into “varna” and “jati,” social groups within a strict hierarchy, passed down through family lines. Historically, these castes did not intermingle and caste carried the right to practice certain occupations.

In March 2023, HUD issued the Restoring HUD’s Discriminatory Effects Standard, rescinding the 2020 rule governing Fair Housing Act disparate impact claims and restoring the 2013 discriminatory effects rule to institute a standard that is more consistent with how the Fair Housing Act has been applied in the courts and within HUD for more than 50 years.

2023 marked the 55th Anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, enacted by the Congress on April 11, 1968. The law has been amended several times over the years and now prohibits housing discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, families with children, and people with disabilities. Notwithstanding the passage of the federal law banning housing discrimination, and dozens of state and local ordinances, housing discrimination persists at high levels.

33,007 fair housing complaints were filed in 2023, which was the highest number ever reported. The unequal financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with high demand and record shortages in housing for rent and for sale, have increased racial and ethnic disparities in the housing market. These factors have added to the worsening of the housing affordability crisis for many households.