Using Local and State Legislation to Preserve and Expand the Ability of Fair Housing Organizations to Prosecute the Discrimination They Uncover

by CRAIG GURIAN

Almost 40 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, we remain far from achieving the Act’s goal of creating “truly integrated and balanced living patterns.”2 Many metropolitan areas are still plagued by high levels of residential segregation.3 Nevertheless, the housing market experiences much less conscious, intentional discrimination than it once did—a change due in no small measure to the consistent efforts of not-for-profit fair housing organizations to initiate investigations of housing providers and real estate brokers.

Those efforts were both powerfully facilitated and too narrowly channeled by Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, the 1982 case in which the Supreme Court announced what seemed like very broad standing rules in fair housing cases.4 However, experience has shown that two of the Havens rules have actually created unexpected difficulties for some fair housing organizations, and there is ample reason to fear that the Supreme Court will undercut Havens entirely when it next faces a fair housing standing case. Thus, there is a pressing need to explore state and local legislative means by which to codify even more expansive standing rules.

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