City governments, sometimes in league with private counsel working on contingency fee, “have started suing banks and mortgage companies to recoup their costs” on such services as “fire departments, police, code enforcement or even demolition” in blighted neighborhoods. “The lawsuits were filed in recent months under different theories, in state and federal court. Cleveland and Buffalo filed suits under public nuisance laws. Minneapolis’ suit was brought on consumer fraud grounds, while Baltimore took the unusual approach of filing suit in federal court under alleged Fair Housing Act violations.” Bank of New York says it was included in Buffalo’s suit against 39 lenders even though it neither originated nor purchased loans, but merely acted as trustee. (Julie Kay, “Empty Homes Spur Cities’ Suits”, National Law Journal, May 9).

• Ninth Circuit, Kozinski, J., rules 8-3 that Roommates.com can be found to have violated fair housing law by asking users to sort themselves according to their wish to room with males or other protected groups; the court distinguished the Craigslist cases [L.A. Times, Volokh, Drum]
• Class-action claim: Apple says its 20-inch iMac displays millions of colors but the true number is a mere 262,144, the others being simulated [WaPo]
• U.K.: compulsive gambler loses $2 million suit against his bookmakers, who are awarded hefty costs under loser-pays rule [BBC first, second, third, fourth stories]
• Pittsburgh couple sue Google saying its Street Views invades their privacy by including pics of their house [The Smoking Gun via WSJ law blog]
• U.S. labor unions keep going to International Labour Organization trying to get current federal ground rules on union organizing declared in violation of international law [PoL]
• Illinois Supreme Court reverses $2 million jury award to woman who sued her fiance’s parents for not warning her he had AIDS [Chicago Tribune]
• Italian family “preparing to sue the previous owners of their house for not telling them it was haunted”; perhaps most famous such case was in Nyack, N.Y. [Ananova, Cleverly]
• Per their hired expert, Kentucky lawyers charged with fen-phen settlement fraud “relied heavily on the advice of famed trial lawyer Stan Chesley in the handling of” the $200 million deal [Lexington Herald-Leader]
• Actor Hal Holbrook of Mark Twain fame doesn’t think much of those local anti-tobacco ordinances that ban smoking on stage even when needed for dramatic effect [Bruce Ramsey, Seattle Times]
• Six U.S. cities so far have been caught “shortening the amber cycles below what is allowed by law on intersections equipped with cameras meant to catch red-light runners.” [Left Lane via Virtuous Republic and Asymmetrical Information]

In order to enhance diversity, it was necessary to suppress it, cont’d: The GuideOne Mutual insurance company offers, in 19 states at last report, what it calls a “FaithGuard” policy rider with features it believes are valued by some churchgoers. In particular, to quote its critics, the rider

waives insurance deductibles if there is a loss to personal property while it is in the “care, custody and control” of the insured’s church; pays church tithes or donations if the insured suffers a loss of income from a disability; and doubles medical limits for an injury received while sponsoring an activity conducted on behalf of the church.

All three provisions might make a family feel more confident about pledging material support or volunteer time to its church, by limiting the potential financial downside in case of accidents or misadventure. But now GuideOne is on the receiving end of a lawsuit filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance, on the grounds that the rider discriminates against non-churchgoers — which is to say, by providing benefits they would have no interest in purchasing. In particular, complains NFHA,

The benefits of FaithGuard are not available to persons who suffer a covered loss or disability while engaged in similar activities but who are not religious, who do not belong to a church, or who do not attend church or participate in religious activities.

Of course people in these latter categories would never be inclined to purchase FaithGuard in the first place, any more than people who never step on airplanes would go out of their way to buy flight insurance. Instead, if they worry about the financial risk of accidents, they would select one of the innumerable insurance products readily available with no particular religious component. But to achieve religious nondiscrimination in the eyes of NFHA, it’s apparently crucial not just that we non-churchgoers have access to every sort of risk coverage we might take a notion to buy, but that FaithGuard’s customers not have access to one they might like. Will the result of this lawsuit if successful be more diversity? Or, again, less? (earlier). More: Rick Armon, “Akron suit claims insurance for churchgoers discriminates”, Akron Beacon Journal, Nov. 27; Religion Clause (Howard M. Friedman), Nov. 28.

Cross-posted from Point of Law.

Says the NAACP complaint: “In 2004, African-American homeowners who received subprime mortgage loans from Defendants were over 30% more likely to be issued a higher-rate loan than Caucasian borrowers with the same qualifications.” (¶ 1.) Thus, it concludes, the disparity “result[s] from a systematic and predatory targeting of African-Americans.” (¶ 6.)

Similarly, Baltimore’s suit argues that Wells Fargo is more likely to foreclose in African-American neighborhoods—and that suit does not even attempt to adjust for similar qualifications or finances, just alleging racial disparity.

Of course, there is a difference between being targeted for a subprime mortgage loan and accepting a subprime mortgage loan. And I don’t believe that African-American homeowners were targeted for subprime mortgage loans because they were African-American. They were targeted because they were homeowners.

Between 2001 and 2005, I was a law-firm associate, high-income, making multiples of what I make today at a thinktank. And, like I am today, I was also white. And the minute my adjustable-rate mortgage was registered in the title books in 2001, I got several solicitations a week in the mail from fly-by-night mortgage brokers offering to refinance my mortgage with ludicrous financial products. (And when I made the mistake of investigating on-line options for switching to a fixed-rate mortgage in 2004, I also got several e-mails a day and phone-calls a month on the same basis to the point that I switched e-mail providers.)

Somehow, I resisted refinancing with a mortgage that was not favorable to me in the long run—I took a 5.25% fixed-rate instead. But I sure was targeted with subprime opportunities, especially as the real-estate prices in my neighborhood skyrocketed about 10% a year. And if, with my skin-color, income, education-level, and impeccable credit-score, I was targeted, so was every homeowner and their grandmother.

To the extent a statistical study says minorities were, ceteris paribus, more likely to receive unfavorable mortgages than whites, the study reflects a specification error, perhaps in failing to account for different levels of consumer education. Another possibility: there is a lot of state-by-state regulation of the mortgage industry. Are subprime mortgages more likely in states with high minority populations, for example? Are subprime mortgage brokers more likely to be aggressive in urban areas in states on the coasts where real estate prices were increasing faster than average, and those states correspond to states with high minority populations?

Note that the CRL study that has been driving the debate and highlighted in the NAACP suit finds that for many types of loans, whites were “disadvantaged” relative to Hispanics, which would seem to count against a racial explanation (unless one believes that bankers hold a racial animus against whites and towards Hispanics) and more towards a geographic explanation.

Note also the irony that these same defendants were accused of failing to offer loans to African-Americans just a few years ago. (See also Apr. 1.)

Finally, note that the NAACP complaint is legally frivolous in at least one respect because of the lack of standing in a federal court. Domino’s Pizza, Inc. v. McDonald, 546 U.S. 470 (2006) (no § 1981 standing for third parties). (Baltimore brings no § 1981 claim.) Fair Housing Act standing is questionable, too, given the lack of allegation of injury to NAACP in particular, though that could be fairly easily rectified by an amended complaint, especially in the Ninth Circuit. Cf. Spann v. Colonial Vill., Inc., 899 F.2d 24 (D.C. Cir. 1990) (”[a]n organization cannot, of course, manufacture the injury necessary to maintain a suit from its expenditure of resources on that very suit”) (R. Bader Ginsburg, J.); Fair Housing of Marin v. Combs, 285 F.3d 899, 902 (9th Cir. 2002). N.B. that there is an amended version of the NAACP complaint that may already fix these issues. NAACP v. Ameriquest Mortgage Co., No. 8:07-cv-00794-AG-AN (C.D. Cal.). For some reason, this is not available on PACER, so I haven’t seen it.

Related: Jan. 8 (Krauss on Baltimore suit); Apr. 25 (me on third-party liability for subprime lending).

(Disclosure: I own less than $15,000 in stock in Citigroup, one of the defendants in the case.)

• Resolving dispute over author Pearl Buck’s lost manuscript was easier once we locked the lawyers out of the negotiating room, heirs say [Phila. Inquirer]


• After U.K.’s Channel 4 ran explosive show documenting pro-beheading, anti-Western rants at some leading mosques, government mulled race-incitement prosecution against… the network [Guardian via Reason "Hit and Run"]


• Breach-of-contract claim: 1-800-FLOWERS told his wife about the flowers he bought for his mistress, after promising not to [Lat, Houston Chronicle]


• “What are you going to do about lawyer jokes?” bar association demands of press-agent hopeful [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]


• You can buy fake doctor’s excuses on the web these days, not that anyone would ever abuse the Family and Medical Leave Act of course [Associated Press]


• Federal judge flays Qualcomm for “gross litigation misconduct” in defending patent suit, orders it to pay opponent’s fees [WSJ Law Blog]


• Jersey regulators keen to shutter eatery whose cook was dealing cocaine without owner’s knowledge, reminding Ralph Reiland of the fate of a restaurant whose manager “should have known” of sex harassment [Press of Atlantic City; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]


• Dropped out of Congressional race after domestic-violence arrest, now suing former father-in-law for lost salary she’d have earned on Capitol Hill if elected [Dayton Daily News]


• New at Point of Law: Atul Gawande says our malpractice system’s a “disaster”; Katrina canal-breach sense restored; Ohio Supreme Court rules against governor on product-liability veto; Paul Minor sentencing hearing (see also); and much more;


• Sacramento law firm that boasted of women’s advancement was itself a den of sleazy male behavior, complainants say [The Recorder]


• Craigslist roommate classifieds tripped up by “fair housing” law [two years ago on Overlawyered]

• Patent suit by firm called Parallel Processing demands that all Sony PlayStation 3 consoles be impounded and destroyed [ArsTechnica, Slashdot]


• It’s not all going to Edwards: a scorecard on presidential campaigns’ law-firm fundraising [National Law Journal]


• Link roundup on Oregon criminal charges against fanny-swatting 13-year-olds [Right Side of the Rainbow; earlier]


• New at Point of Law: Spitzenfreude is mirth derived from ethical pratfall of NY’s moralist governor; Florida’s insurance fiasco; more on those “medical” bankruptcies; Alabama judge appoints special prosecutor in Dickie Scruggs affair after feds take a pass; and much more;


• One hurdle for court action by survivors of slain Middle East contractors against Blackwater: the four men had signed contracts agreeing not to sue their employer [Henley; W$J]


• Saying swim diaper should suffice, Akron mom and “fair housing” advocates sue condo that barred pre-potty-trained kids from pool [AP/FoxNews.com]


• Not only are those punitive new Virginia traffic laws unpopular, but a judge has just declared them unconstitutional as well [Washington Post; earlier here and here]


• Pepsi settles class actions over minute quantities of benzene that might form when soft drink ingredients combine [Reuters, Food Navigator, Journal-News]


• U.K. considers making it easier for unmarried cohabitators to go to court when their households break up [Times Online]


• Did a securities fraudster use protracted depositions to browbeat his victims? [Salt Lake City Tribune]


• “Victims’ Rights Amendment” to U.S. Constitution, promoted as giving crime victims a fairer shake, is bad idea for lots of reasons [eight years ago on Overlawyered]

We’ve extensively covered the various fair-housing complaints against Craiglist (Aug. 10, 2005; Feb. 9, Feb. 20, Mar. 6, Jun. 28, Dec. 1, 2006) for that service’s hosting ads for housing and roommates that fall afoul of non-discrimination laws—it’s technically illegal for a woman to say that she’s looking for another woman to share her apartment with, much less a co-religionist or someone without kids. We somehow missed the Santa Clara and San Diego lawsuits against Roommates.com over the same issue. While a district threw out the case, an appeal went to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and that was that: the three judges, Kozinski, Reinhardt, and Ikuta, wrote three separate opinions, with two of them deciding that there was enough for a suit to go forward on the grounds that there may be a cause of action under the Fair Housing Act because Roommate.com makes it easier for their users to express discriminatory preferences by using questionnaires that are then translated into searchable advertisements, thus supposedly running outside the Communications Decency Act’s immunity provision by being an “information content provider” because it is “responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of [the] information”:

“By categorizing, channeling and limiting the distribution of users’ profiles, Roommate provides an additional layer of information that it is “responsible” at least “in part” for creating or developing.”

Worse, Judge Kozinski’s opinion issues irrelevant dicta, apparently aimed at a suit not being litigated before him:

Imagine, for example, www.harrassthem.com with the slogan “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even.” A visitor to this Web site would be encouraged to provide private, sensitive and/or defamatory information about others — all to be posted online for a fee.

Kozinski posits that this site—plainly based on dontdatehimgirl.com (Apr. 9 and links therein)—would also flunk the CDA protection. (Cal Law reporter/blogger Brian McDonough notes this passage, but apparently thinks it’s just a joke and thus misses its significance.) The administrators of Autoadmit/xoxohth.com (May 3) might also be concerned about this dicta. (Rebecca Tushnet makes this point independently.)

This substantial narrowing of § 230(c) protections is also bad because it now means that a number of Internet sites that were plainly protected before no longer have unambiguous protection, a problem exacerbated by the lack of a clear majority opinion. Creative lawyering can argue that these websites might be within Fair Housing Counsel’s fact-driven exception to the CDA exception, and thus get past the motion-to-dismiss stage, forcing defendants into expensive legal proceedings.

Elsewhere on the Internet: Volokh; Eric Goldman; Adam Liptak @ NYT; Slashdot; Laura Quilter; Aaron Perzanowski; Lillian Edwards; The Register. Joe Gratz has purchased harassthem.com.

Volokh separately argues the underlying laws are unconstitutional as applied to roommates.

They’re doing it again in California: “State and federal authorities have opened an investigation into a Norco housewife, alleging that her vitriolic protests against a high-risk group home in her neighborhood may constitute housing discrimination.” Federal officials asked state fair housing regulators to investigate Julie Waltz, 61, who had protested plans to open a group house next to her home for developmentally disabled residents; among those eligible to reside there under state law would be persons deemed not competent to stand trial on sex crime charges. In 2000, the Ninth Circuit ruled that three Berkeley, Calif. neighbors’ rights had been violated by an “extraordinarily intrusive and chilling” investigation of whether their protests had been contrary to housing discrimination law. In that episode, as in the latest one, housing advocates had set the investigation in motion by filing complaints against the neighbors.

A spokesman for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development acknowledged that in order to recommend the inquiry, it had to push aside internal guidelines that prohibit such an investigation because it infringes on the 1st Amendment.

The rules require that complaints of housing discrimination be investigated only in cases in which the alleged victim’s safety has been threatened.

No such allegation has been made against Waltz, but HUD opened an investigation into her and state investigators ordered her to respond to the complaint in detail because a preliminary review showed that someone else in the neighborhood may have made a violent threat, said HUD spokesman Larry Bush.

(Garrett Therolf, “Protester of group home is targeted”, Los Angeles Times, Mar. 20).

• $47.5 million verdict in Vioxx retrial. [Point of Law]
• D.C. Circuit has big Second Amendment opinion striking down DC gun ban; Brady Center inconsistent about its view of democracy versus the constitution. [Bader; NRO symposium; 18 posts at Volokh]
• Alien Tort Statute: legal imperialism? [Point of Law]
• Michigan Justice Elizabeth Weaver continues to lose it [ATL; People v. Parsons]
• Update in Navarro $217 million verdict: Defendant doctors in lawsuit now suing their own attorneys [St. Pete Times (h/t F.R.)]
• “What did you say about my kiwi?” bill in California [Legal Pad]
• Yeah, that will resolve the housing crisis: group intervenes to protest plan for new apartment complex under fair housing laws because “only” 16 units out of 299 have three bedrooms. [Boston Globe (h/t A.I.)]
• Norm-shifting in the post-MySpace age. [Barnett @ Volokh v. Taylor]

Recent developments on past stories:

* Remember Shannon Peterson, the Denver condo owner who got sued by a neighbor who complained that she was taking baths too early? (Feb. 27). The case is still dragging on the better part of a year later, a judge having refused so far to throw it out. David Giacalone has the details (Nov. 30).

* Glamourpuss lawsuit-chaser Erin Brockovich, fresh from the humiliating dismissal (Nov. 18) of suits she fronted against California hospitals alleging Medicare overbilling, has been rebuffed in another high-profile case. This time a judge has dismissed twelve lawsuits brought by her law firm of Masry & Vititoe alleging that exposure to oil rigs at Beverly Hills High School caused cancer among students there (Martha Groves and Jessica Garrison, “School oil-rig lawsuits dismissed”, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 23) (via Nordberg who got it from Legal Reader). For more on the case, see Jul. 15 and Nov. 19, 2003, and Mar. 16, 2004. The New Republic has marked the occasion by reprinting its revealing 2003 article on the affair by Eric Umansky. P.S. More from Umansky, who has his own blog, here.

* Reader E.B. writes in to say:

Remember the group of parents (Oct. 23) who threatened litigation over their daughters’ playing time on the girl’s basketball team? The ones who demanded a six-person panel to oversee the selection of the players?

None of the parents’ daughters made the team. And they’re not happy about it. See C.W. Nevius, “Castro Valley hoops coach can’t win”, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 30.

* A court has dismissed the action (Aug. 10, 2005; Feb. 9, Feb. 20, Mar. 6, Jun. 28, 2006) by fair housing activists against Craigslist over user ads that expressed improper preferences or mentioned forbidden categories in soliciting tenants, apartment-sharers and so forth. (Anne Broache, “Craigslist wins housing ad dispute”, CNet, Nov. 17). However, blawger David Fish says the court’s reasoning was highly unfavorable to many other Internet companies generally, and may expose them to future liabilities (Nov. 15). Craigslist now has an elaborate page warning users that it is unlawful for them to post preferences, etc. in most situations not involving shared living space. Update: David Fish’s name corrected, apologies for earlier error.

* 3 pm update to the updates from Ted: “An Illinois intermediate appellate court overturned the $27 million verdict in Mikolajczyk v. Ford (which we reported on last year), ordering the lower court to replace the arbitrary jury verdict with a lower arbitrary number. Why the jury’s damage award is considered the product of passion and prejudice, but the same jury’s liability award is kosher, remains unclear. (Steve Patterson, “Court says $27 million crash award too much”, Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 23).”

Google, Amazon, AOL and Yahoo are all defending Craigslist in the suit demanding that it censor its housing ads so as to prevent users from requesting “gay Latino sought for roomshare” and the like (Lynne Marek, “Online Peers Stand Up for Craigslist in Lawsuit”, National Law Journal, Jun. 28). Earlier coverage: Aug. 10, 2005; Feb. 9, Feb. 20, Mar. 6, 2006. Craigslist’s defense, by CEO Jim Buckmaster, is here.

A radical pro-affirmative action group, By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), joined by Detroit’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, have filed a Voting Rights Act lawsuit against the sponsors of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) in federal court. MCRI is a ballot initiative would ban racial and gender set-asides and preferences in state contracting, employment, and public education. It is modeled on an earlier measure passed by California voters and upheld by the federal courts. BAMN argues that black voters who signed the petition to put MCRI on the ballot did so only because they did not realize it would restrict affirmative action, because they were confused by MCRI’s title, text, or misleading statements by MCRI signature gatherers. That, it claims, amounts to fraud.

BAMN’s lawsuit is factually groundless. Its fraud claims were considered and rejected by the Michigan Court of Appeals, which ordered MCRI placed on the ballot. MCRI’s text, which was presented to all petition signers, expressly prohibits racial preferences, eliminating any confusion about its effect on affirmative action. Moreover, the Voting Rights Act generally applies to the acts of state election officials, not private parties, and cases such as Delgado v. Smith, 861 F.2d 1489 (11th Cir. 1988), hold that the Voting Rights Act does not apply to initiative petitions.

BAMN’s lawsuit appears to be part of a pattern of intimidation. One BAMN official is accused of threatening MCRI executive director Jennifer Gratz with a knife.

BAMN’s suit is another example of how civil rights lawsuits are increasingly misused as political weapons or tools of censorship. For example, in Affordable Housing Development Corporation v. Fresno, 433 F.3d 1182 (9th Cir. 2006), a developer used the Fair Housing Act to sue citizens who publicly opposed a housing development, arguing that their petitioning of city officials resulted in the city not funding the project. That, the developer argued, had an unlawful “disparate impact” on minority groups destined to live in the development. The trial court initially accepted this argument, holding that the Fair Housing Act overrode the citizens’ right of free speech. Years later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the lawsuit, holding that the citizens’ opposition to the project was protected by the First Amendment and the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. (The Noerr-Pennington doctrine protects citizens from antitrust and civil rights claims based on their speech and petitioning activity). It ordered the developer to pay the citizens’ crippling legal bills, which had risen to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

BAMN’s lawsuit would raise First Amendment problems even if it were true that voters misunderstood MCRI’s purpose, and even if MCRI’s sponsors knew of any erroneous statements about MCRI by signature gatherers. The courts have generally held that the First Amendment bars liability for speech in ballot initiatives and other political campaigns, even if the speech is knowingly false.

The federal taxpayer, by way of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, funnels substantial sums to private “fair housing” advocacy groups for purposes of suing landlords, newspapers, and other likely suspects over alleged housing discrimination; raising consciousness among potential claimants and others; and generally promoting expansive readings of housing-bias law. For example, in this listing of $20 million worth of fiscal 2002 grants, HUD boasts of bestowing $242,339 on the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. for something called its Private Enforcement Initiative (PEI), described as follows:

While addressing the needs of minorities in the metropolitan Chicago area, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights will increase awareness of fair housing rights; empower victims to report incidents of discrimination; develop credible, legitimate evidence to support discrimination complaints; increase the number of complaints referred to HUD for enforcement; and provide relief to discrimination victims. Utilizing access to pro bono attorneys from Chicago’s most prominent law firms, as well as their resources, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee will receive, document, and investigate individual complaints of discrimination.

If the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because it’s the group that last month filed a widely criticized lawsuit against Craigslist (Feb. 9, Feb. 20) seeking to force the online service to pre-censor users’ postings of roommate and other housing classifieds (rather than just pull them off after complaints, as now).

Even if the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee suit fails in court — as is widely expected — the controversy is likely to continue. In yesterday’s New York Times, Adam Liptak says the activists are likely to push for federal legislation stripping website operators of their current protection against being held liable for users’ postings. (”The Ads Discriminate, but Does the Web?”, Mar. 5). Don’t assume that “fair housing” advocates are powerless on Capitol Hill these days, either: at one set of hearings last week, all the witnesses called (including this one (PDF), quoted in the Times piece) were there to speak up for expansive enforcement of the law, with nary a dissenting word about any possible competing values at stake. More: Maggie’s Farm.

Dogs defending cats dept.: Denver’s Rocky Mountain News editorially criticizes the “fair housing” complaint against the online service over allegedly improper rental, roommate and property-sale ads (”Meddlers eye online freedom”, Feb. 19)(see Feb. 9).

“The Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law sued San Francisco-based Craigslist, claiming that during a six-month period beginning in July, the site ran more than 100 ads in Chicago that violated the federal Fair Housing Act. The committee, a public interest consortium of the city’s leading law firms, said in a federal suit that those ads discriminated on race, religion, sex, family status or national origin.” Craigslist does not screen ads in advance, although it gives readers a way to flag unlawful or inappropriate content for possible removal. According to the complaint (Chicago Lawyers Committee v. Craigslist, PDF format), some of the rental ads carried such damning indicators of putative bigotry as “Perfect place for city single” (unfair to families of eight!) and “very quiet street opposite church” (trying to screen out atheists, are you?), and many are plainly for roommate shares or other live-in situations. Paging David Bernstein! (Mike Hughlett, “Craigslist sued over housing ad bias”, Chicago Tribune/Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Feb. 8)(via Reynolds). Eric Goldman says a similar earlier suit against Roommate.com did not fare well (Feb. 8). For more on the issue of “discrimination” in roommate selection, see Jul. 10-11, 2002; for more on such complaints against Craigslist, see Aug. 10, 2005. (& welcome Instapundit readers).

P.S. As requested, David Bernstein weighs in (Feb. 9), as does Eugene Volokh.

Roommate preferences, improper mention that a listed property is near churches or synagogues, hints about age or family status: it’s easy to step on a legal land mine when listing your apartment rental. “The Internet is like the Wild, Wild West. People just speak their minds,” tut-tuts D.C. civil rights attorney John Relman (Sarah Lesher, “Online housing ads spur concern over bias”, Washington Times, Aug. 9)(via David Bernstein, who comments). Update: Feb. 9, 2006 (suit filed).

ABC had a goo-goo impulse: put on a show where three closed-minded families of bigots are exposed to a series of competing diverse families, with the winning family getting awarded a 3300-sq.ft. house in the Austin neighborhood with their new friends. “[W]ith every encounter with these families, the opinionated neighbors’ pre-conceived assumptions and prejudices are also chipped away, and they learn that, while on the outside we may appear different, deep inside we share many common bonds. The judges find themselves learning to see people, not stereotypes.” While it’s probably not a tremendous loss to our society’s future cultural heritage, the show, which was to debut July 10, was cancelled because of fears that it would prompt a lawsuit under the Fair Housing Act. (Lisa de Moraes, “ABC Faces Reality, Pulls Welcome Mat on ‘Neighborhood’”, Washington Post, Jun. 30; Google cache of memory-holed ABC show page).

A federal jury in Detroit has awarded $300,000 in punitive damages and $14,209 in actual damages to Joyce Grad, saying the Royalwood cooperative apartment association in suburban Royal Oak violated her rights under the federal Fair Housing Act when it declined to waive its no-pets policy to permit her to bring in an emotional-assistance dog. Grad suffers from mental and emotional ailments that include severe depression. One of the services on which Ms. Grad has come to rely on the dog is in making sure she gets up in the morning: “I’ve trained her that if I don’t get up by 7, she is to go to [the] door and bark until help arrives.” Perfect for the neighbors! (David Ashenfelter, “Disabled woman’s dog has its day”, Detroit Free Press, Feb. 23). For more on the steady expansion of demands that legally protected status be accorded to “emotional-assistance” animals, see Oct. 25 and Dec. 2, 2004. For more cases in which disabled-rights-in-housing have led to noisy results, see Aug. 21-22, 2000 and Apr. 5-7, 2002.