housing discrimination – Overlawyered

Supreme Court should review oppressive Seattle anti-landlord law

Walter Olson — Tue, 14 Apr 2020 04:05:17 +0000

A Seattle law forces landlords to rent to whatever would-be tenant, however odious, is first in line. That’s a violation of fundamental rights and a compensable taking, argues the Cato Institute’s certiorari amicus brief in Yim v. City of Seattle [Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus, and Sam Spiegelman; earlier here, here, and here]

Tags: housing discrimination, landlord tenant law, Seattle, Supreme Court

Supreme Court should review oppressive Seattle anti-landlord law is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Section 8 Landlording Should Be Voluntary

Walter Olson — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 04:05:00 +0000

It’s the strings: landlords should have a right to decide for themselves whether to shoulder the Section 8 program’s only-too-real regulatory burdens, I argue in my new Cato piece, reacting to a Baltimore Sun opinion piece. Baltimore County is the scene of a long-running controversy over whether to force landlords to participate in the federal housing voucher program. Earlier here.

Sidelight: A new San Diego ordinance that took effect August 1 “orders violators to pay three times the advertised monthly rent to eligible plaintiffs who saw the ad, plus punitive damages, as well as a plaintiff’s attorney fees and costs if a judge so orders. Even after the offending ad is taken down or changed, exposure to liability from anyone who saw the illegal ad lasts for a year.” Soon thereafter enterprising attorney Christian Curry filed more than 50 lawsuits under the ordinance and has obtained many settlements, although critics suspect his clients weren’t always intent on living in properties with challenged ads; they also say some ads were targeted that were written before the law changed and not intentionally left online afterward. A spokeswoman for a property group “likened the new Section 8 cases to ‘drive-by’ lawsuits over violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.” [Ashly McGlone and Jack Molmud, Voice of San Diego]

Tags: ADA filing mills, Baltimore, housing discrimination, San Diego

Section 8 Landlording Should Be Voluntary is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Discrimination law roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 09:55:45 +0000

Don’t try to pull a “back where she came from” tirade at a private workplace [EEOC guidance (“potentially unlawful” for employer to allow); Daniel Schwartz]
“B.C. groin waxing case is a mockery of human rights” [Rex Murphy, National Post] Also from Canada: “Single dad facing Human Rights Complaint for asking the age and gender of a potential babysitter” [Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, related case]
Canada continued: inquiry on missing and murdered indigenous women “strips the word genocide of meaning” [Jonathan Kay, Quillette]
More evidence that “ban the box” laws restricting criminal record inquiries “induce firms to engage in statistical discrimination that negatively affects the employment prospects of minorities.” [Peter Van Doren/Cato, earlier here and here]
Disparate-impact watch: Fifth Circuit rules, over a dissent, that landlords do not violate the federal Fair Housing Act by declining to accept Section 8 rent vouchers [opinion and denial of rehearing en banc (7-9) in Inclusive Communities Project v. Lincoln Properties; earlier here]
“Agencies that enforce antidiscrimination laws tend to be oblivious or hostile to constitutionally protected liberties in general and freedom of speech in particular.” [David Bernstein]

Tags: Canada, criminal records and hiring, discrimination law, housing discrimination

Discrimination law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

August 7 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 09:58:17 +0000

“We got nailed once because someone barehanded a bag of lettuce without a glove.” Kitchen-eye tales of NYC’s restaurant inspection regime [Saxon Baird, NY Eater]
Positive reviews for new HUD regs on housing discrimination, affordability, and supply [National Review: Roger Clegg; Salim Furth]
Sony isn’t making its robot companion dog available in Illinois because its facial recognition features fall under the state’s onerous Biometric Information Privacy Act; an earlier in-state casualty was Google’s “which museum portrait is your selfie like?” service [Megan Wollerton, CNet, earlier here and here] Is there any hope of slowing down the rush of class action suits filed under the law? [Chris Burt, Biometric Update]
Victory on a-peel: “3rd Circuit rules maker of banana costume is entitled to ‘fruits of its intellectual labor'” [ABA Journal, earlier here, etc.]
D.C. Circuit “Rips ‘Legal Artifice’ in Kasowitz Firm’s Megabillions Whistleblower Case” [Dan Packel, The American Lawyer; Cory Andrews, WLF]
Congress passes a law framed as pro-veteran, doesn’t take the time to spell out quite how it works, years later we meet the (presumably unintended) losers in the form of nonprofits that employ blind and deaf workers [Julie Havlak, Carolina Journal, quotes me]

Tags: disabled rights, housing discrimination, Illinois, NYC, privacy, restaurants, whistleblowers

August 7 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Requiring adult supervision when kids use pool = unlawful discrimination?

Walter Olson — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 09:59:42 +0000

It’s okay for a condo swimming pool to require adult supervision of children, right? Wrong: “familial status” is one of the many bases for protection under housing discrimination law. As a result, “any rule or policy targeting children is likely to trigger a discrimination accusation or a fair housing inquiry.” To defend it against attack, the condo must be prepared to prove that the rule or policy is both based on a “compelling business necessity” and represents the “least restrictive means” to achieve the stated purpose. You’d think safety might be an adequate reason, but in two cases federal courts in California have found otherwise. Some rules might survive if, e.g., they are based on Red Cross guidelines, but putatively improper motives such as reducing noise or crowd control must not enter into any rationale. Also, policies must permit unrelated companions, rather than just parents, to count as the supervision [Matt D. Ober, Washington Post]

Tags: discrimination law, housing discrimination, pools

Requiring adult supervision when kids use pool = unlawful discrimination? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Discrimination law roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 09:56:22 +0000

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signs into law two doubtfully constitutional bills applying to campuses an overbroad, subjective definition of sexual harassment, and requiring all college employees to report such conduct on pain of criminal penalty [Tyler Coward, FIRE]
New York adopts workplace harassment law that’s much more speech-hostile than federal, including a dropping of the requirement that prohibited expression be “severe or pervasive” [Hans Bader; Wiggin & Dana, NLR; Douglas Oldham, Barnes & Thornburg]
One to watch: SCOTUS will decide standard for proving s. 1981 discrimination claims, in case accusing Comcast of bias in not carrying programming of black network [ABA Journal]
A thumbs-down review: “The Kamala Harris Plan to Address the Gender Pay Gap,” Cato Daily Podcast with Ryan Bourne and Caleb Brown;
Even when there’s nothing unlawful about an eviction, city bars landlords from telling tenants they’re being evicted for discriminatory reasons. Laws banning truthful business speech about lawful conduct should trip First Amendment review [Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus brief in Seeberger v. Davenport Civil Rights Commission]
Second Circuit withdraws decision that held landlords liable for tenant-on-tenant harassment under Fair Housing Act [Scott Greenfield, earlier]

Tags: discrimination law, harassment law, housing discrimination, Kamala Harris, New York state, Supreme Court, Texas

Discrimination law roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Trouble at Sedgwick Gardens

Walter Olson — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 04:05:44 +0000

In D.C.’s Cleveland Park, a neighborhood that reporter Peter Jamison describes as a “bastion of urbane liberalism,” a stately apartment complex called the Sedgwick Gardens is something of an experimental subject for a combination of various progressive housing policies. “As of February, tenants with city-issued housing vouchers had filled nearly half of the building’s roughly 140 units,” and many of the new tenants “are homeless men and women who came directly from shelters or the streets, some still struggling with severe behavioral problems.” Jamison tells the story in this Washington Post article (reprinted at Seattle Times).

More on the District of Columbia’s “source of income discrimination” law, under which landlords commit a violation if they reject a prospective tenant because he or she will be paid for by a voucher, here and here.

Tags: housing discrimination, landlord tenant law, Washington D.C.

Trouble at Sedgwick Gardens is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

May 9 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 09 May 2019 10:02:15 +0000

Next sector for a boom in IP litigation: trade secrets? [Ike Brannon]
Creating split among federal appeals courts, Seventh Circuit rules auto-erotic asphyxiation falls under insurance policy exclusion for “self-inflicted injury.” [Volokh; Tran v. Minnesota Life Insurance Company] In its commentary, the Institute for Justice is willing to go there: “Will the Supreme Court resolve the split? Don’t hold your breath.”
“The county has assigned at least four prosecutors to handle the Bellevue cat case” as Miska, the most notorious cat in King County, Washington, lawyers up [KIRO, update]
I’m quoted in article on Supreme Court’s agreeing to consider whether 1964 ban on employment discrimination because of sex includes ban on transgender discrimination [Nicole Russell, Washington Examiner]
Federalist Society podcast on populist antitrust with Babette Boliek, Geoffrey Manne, William Rinehart, Hal Singer, and Joanna Tsai;
Did a mobile home park violate housing discrimination law by checking applicants’ lawful immigration status? Fourth Circuit ruling threatens to open “disparate-impact” floodgates Supreme Court warned of in earlier case [Ilya Shapiro and Nathan Harvey on Cato cert amicus in Waples Mobile Home Park v. de Reyes]

Tags: animals, antitrust, housing discrimination, intellectual property, Seattle, Supreme Court, transgender

May 9 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

March 13 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 09:59:21 +0000

“Near the end of her new proposal to break up Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple, Senator Warren asks, ‘So what would the Internet look like after all these reforms?’ It’s a good question.” [Geoffrey Manne and Alec Stapp, Truth on the Market/CNBC]
Floral arrangements as constitutionally protected expression: Cato files amicus on behalf of First Amendment rights of Washington florist Barronelle Stutzman not to serve a wedding of which she disapproves [Ilya Shapiro and Patrick Moran, Washington Supreme Court]
“Over several months, man repeatedly threatens his next-door neighbor with profanity, racial epithets. The police investigate, warn the man to stop, and then arrest him when he does not. Eventually, the man leaves the apartment complex after the landlord declines to renew his lease. Can the neighbor sue the landlord for failing to intervene sooner? The Second Circuit says yes, the neighbor’s Fair Housing Act claims should not have been dismissed. Dissent: The FHA doesn’t say landlords can be liable for tenant-on-tenant harassment; more likely it precludes such claims.” [IJ “Short Circuit” on Francis v. Kings Park Manor, Second Circuit; Scott Greenfield]
Gender identity: R. Shep Melnick on where the momentum is headed among judges, regulators, and administrators [Liberty and Law]
Comfort for lawmakers means discomfort for taxpayers? Study finds “growth in state government expenditures in warm states was higher after the introduction of air conditioning” [Thomas A. Garrett and Natalia A. Kolesnikova, Cato Journal]
“Succubustic” is not a word you should probably use at all, certainly not to describe any real person, and most definitely not if you are a lawyer to describe a judge [Lowering the Bar]

Tags: antitrust, don't, Elizabeth Warren, housing discrimination, transgender

March 13 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Christmas lighting fight divides community

Walter Olson — Sun, 16 Dec 2018 17:01:35 +0000

Do something nice for your neighbors this Christmas and refrain from taking them to court. An attorney who resides in Hayden, Idaho, has gotten into “a miserable four-year war with his neighborhood” over holiday displays at his house [Daniel Walters, Inlander]

Tags: Christmas and other holidays, housing discrimination, Idaho, property law

Christmas lighting fight divides community is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system