Law Commons^™

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 …