Supreme Court Poised To Deal Serious Blow To Fighting Racial Discrimination In Housing

[Purveyor]

By Nikole Hannah-Jones and Jeff Larson, ProPublica

For the past four decades, federal officials and civil rights lawyers have wielded a potent legal weapon in the fight against housing discrimination. Even when they couldn’t prove that practices of landlords, lenders or governments were racially motivated, they could win cases by showing minorities had suffered disproportionate harm.

The Obama administration has used the principle of “disparate impact” to reach record settlements with banks accused of discriminatory lending and to confront localities whose housing policies limited opportunities for black and Latino renters. A senior official recently said that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is pursuing more than two dozen cases based on the theory.

Those cases, and others brought by civil rights groups and other agencies, could soon be halted in their tracks. For the second time in two years, the Supreme Court is poised to review a case that challenges whether the concept of “disparate impact” can be used to enforce the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/08/supreme-court-poised-to-deal-serious-blow-to-fighting-racial-discrimination-in-housing/

[marmar]

1. Heading toward the 19th century at warp speed.

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