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Full-Text Articles in Law
Beyond Disparate Impact: How The Fair Housing Movement Can Move On, Rigel C. Oliveri
Beyond Disparate Impact: How The Fair Housing Movement Can Move On, Rigel C. Oliveri
Faculty Publications
Disparate impact theory is a vital tool for fair housing advocates. It allows them to challenge institutional behaviors that harm minority groups and municipal practices that perpetuate long-standing segregated patterns, without having to go through the difficult process of identifying a specific bad actor with explicitly discriminatory motives. Disparate impact theory has been a failure for fair housing advocates. It is overly complicated, infrequently used, and seldom leads to plaintiff success. Moreover, the availability of this theory has led to the underdevelopment of the law surrounding intentional discrimination, which has ultimately made all cases with circumstantial evidence more difficult to …
Is Acquisition Everything? Protecting The Rights Of Occupants Under The Fair Housing Act, Rigel C. Oliveri
Is Acquisition Everything? Protecting The Rights Of Occupants Under The Fair Housing Act, Rigel C. Oliveri
Faculty Publications
This article addresses a recent trend among the federal courts to deny housing discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act in cases where the plaintiff was an occupant of the housing at the time the discrimination occurred. Put another way, the courts have begun to read the FHA as protecting only the right to obtain housing, not the right to occupy that housing free of discrimination.The trend began with a 2004 Seventh Circuit opinion authored by Judge Richard Posner in the case of Halprin v. The Prairie Single Family Homes. Halprin dismissed most of the claims of a Jewish couple …
New Look At Sexual Harassment Under The Fair Housing Act: The Forgotten Role Of 3604, Rigel C. Oliveri, Robert G. Schwemm
New Look At Sexual Harassment Under The Fair Housing Act: The Forgotten Role Of 3604, Rigel C. Oliveri, Robert G. Schwemm
Faculty Publications
This Article argues that § 3604(c) is applicable in virtually every sexual harassment case involving housing and that its applicability means the FHA can be a more effective statute for attacking sexual harassment than Title VII. Part I reviews the law governing sexual harassment in housing, including the role that Title VII precedents have had in shaping this law. Part II shows how § 3604(c) goes further than its Title VII counterpart in prohibiting statements that are often at the heart of a sexual harassment claim and identifies some specific situations in which § 3604(c) may be helpful in challenging …