HUD continues to whittle away at the Fair Housing Act
The Fair Housing Act [...] prohibits not only intentional segregation, but also policies and practices whose effect is to discriminate for no defensible reason, even if there is no evidence of a racial motive. Lawyers describe such actions as having a “disparate impact” on minorities. Now, however, the Trump administration is about to put into effect procedures to make it virtually impossible to prove disparate impact, no matter how egregious a discriminatory policy or practice may be.
Richard Rothstein, author of the influential book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, presents an opinion piece in The New York Times highlighting the latest multi-pronged efforts on the part of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to dismantle the effectiveness and legal significance of the Fair Housing Act under the administration of President Donald Trump.
The latest efforts aim to make filing lawsuits arguing that policies and practices generate acts of de-facto racial segregation more difficult and onerous.
