FHA
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Murder or just a misunderstanding? The Fifth Circuit on disparate impact discrimination
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 Continue reading
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HUD’s new Guidance on assistance animals will encourage emotional support animal fraud.
On January 28, 2020 HUD issued its “Guidance on Reasonable Accommodations under the Fair Housing Act Relating to Assistance Animals.”† Over the course of 19 poorly written and poorly organized pages HUD provides one crumb of help for housing providers faced with bogus requests for emotional support animals. The bulk of the “Guidance” is a Continue reading
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Quick Hits – All the news for April 2018
April was a busy month for courts confronting ADA lawsuits and some of the news is good for business; at least for business outside the Ninth Circuit. Of the cases we discuss, the two website cases are the most interesting, for they show how website accessibility cases are pointing the way back to a requirement Continue reading
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Obvious but often overlooked – it takes more than an impairment to be disabled under the ADA (or FHA)
The March 13 decision in Johnson v. NYS Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse, 1:16-cv-9769 (S.D.N.Y. March 13, 2018) shouldn’t be particularly interesting. The plaintiff claimed to be disabled because he was a recovering alcoholic. The Court dismissed the complaint because the plaintiff did not allege that his alcoholism interfered with a major life activity, explaining: Continue reading
