Murder or just a misunderstanding? The Fifth Circuit on disparate impact discrimination

March 3, 2021 By Richard Hunt in FHA Disparate Impact, FHA Statistics Tags: ADA defense, disparate impact, FHA, FHA Defense, Fifth Circuit, Heartland, Inclusive Communities Project, Lincoln Properties, robust causality, robust causation

ICP v Lincoln Properties and its “progeny.”

In the last days of the Trump administration HUD promulgated a new regulation concerning disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act whose intent was very clearly to make such claims difficult even to plead, let alone prove.¹ Its implementation remains stayed by a federal court, but in the Fifth Circuit that may not matter because earlier Fifth Circuit cases are even more restrictive. Prompted by the discussion in Treece v. Perrier Condo. Owners Assn., Inc., 2021 WL 533720 (E.D. La. Feb. 12, 2021) I decided to take a hard look at the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. v. Lincoln Prop. Co., 920 F.3d 890, 895 (5th Cir. 2019), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 2506 (2020). That turned out to be a bigger project than I expected, because as interpreted Lincoln Properties is incredibly restrictive, but those interpretations are almost certainly wrong. Clarification seems inevitable even with the existing conservative Supreme Court. Here’s why. More

Education v. Litigation – HUD would rather fight than teach.

May 2, 2016 By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, FHA, FHA Statistics, Landlord-tenant, Multi-Family Tags: Fair Housing, Fair Housing Training, FHA, FHA Litigation, HUD, HUD guidance, HUD policies, HUD regulations

Today’s press release concerning HUD’s Fair Housing Initiative Program (“FHIP”) says all you need to know about HUD’s approach to eliminating housing discrimination. Out of more than $37 million dollars made available to improve fair housing in this program, HUD is spending about 20% on programs intended to educate the public and business about their rights and obligations, while 80% goes to funding private organizations that are in the business of either suing folks or filing HUD complaints. HUD is clearly much less interested in helping people obey the law than in punishing people who fail to obey it. The press release ends, of course, with information on how to file a complaint with HUD. There’s no mention of where to go for education on following the law. More

Numerosity, the ADA and FHA Class Action Numbers Game

July 21, 2015 By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA Class Actions, ADA Statistics, FHA Class Actions, FHA Statistics Tags: ADA Class Action, FHA Class Action, private lawsuits, Statistics

“How to Lie with Statistics” by Darrell Huff is one of my favorite books, because statistical analysis is often critical in ADA class action and other kinds of civil rights litigation, and statistics are so often abused in these cases. The difference between the manageable defense of one or two properties and an unbelievably expensive defense involving hundreds or thousands can turn on whether a particular class meets the “numerosity” requirement in Rule 23(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That requires the use, and often mis-use, of statistics. More