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Housing Discrimination (Fair Housing Act)

The federal law making it unlawful to refuse housing, or set different terms, because of who someone is.

Informational only - this is not legal advice. These definitions explain general legal vocabulary in plain English. They are not advice about your situation, reading them creates no attorney-client relationship, and the law differs from state to state and changes over time. For advice you can rely on, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

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What it means

The Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to refuse to rent or sell housing, to set different terms or conditions, to advertise a preference, or to falsely represent that housing is unavailable, because of a protected characteristic. The characteristics protected federally are race, colour, religion, sex, familial status - broadly, having children in the household - national origin, and disability. Many states and cities protect further characteristics, and where they do, the local law adds to the federal floor rather than replacing it.

Disability is treated differently from the others, and this is the part most often not known. A housing provider must make reasonable accommodations - changes to rules, policies or services, such as permitting an assistance animal where a no-pets rule applies - and must permit reasonable modifications, meaning physical changes to the unit, generally at the tenant's expense. These are affirmative duties: doing nothing is not neutrality, it is a potential violation.

Discrimination in these cases is rarely explicit. It is far more often established by circumstance: the unit that becomes unavailable on the phone and available to a different caller, the different deposit, the rule applied to one family and not another. That is why testing evidence and contemporaneous records carry so much weight.

Two enforcement routes exist and they run in parallel: an administrative complaint to HUD or a substantially equivalent state or local agency, which investigates at no cost to the complainant, and a private civil action in court. Each has its own filing deadline set by the statute; this page states neither, and both are shorter than people assume.

Where this comes from

The Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601-3631. The prohibited practices are at 42 U.S.C. § 3604, which also contains the reasonable accommodation and reasonable modification duties for disability at § 3604(f). Administrative complaints to HUD proceed under 42 U.S.C. § 3610 and private civil actions under 42 U.S.C. § 3613, each subject to a filing period set by those sections. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act may apply additionally to housing that receives federal funding or contains public accommodations.

When people hire a lawyer for this

The deadlines are the reason not to wait, and they differ between the administrative and the court route, so the choice is worth making deliberately rather than by default. The administrative route costs the complainant nothing to pursue, which makes it the practical option for most people. Local fair housing organisations and legal aid programmes handle these cases and can also arrange testing - the evidence that most reliably converts a suspicion into a provable claim. Keep the advertisement, the messages and a dated note of what was said and by whom.

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Related terms

Other entries in the same area of law, each written from the same primary sources.

ADA Public Accommodations (Title III)The part of the Americans with Disabilities Act that applies to businesses open to the public - shops, restaurants, hotels, clinics, theatres, and in many courts their websites - requiring access, policy changes and communication aids, with the cost limits that shape what can be demanded.
Disparate ImpactDiscrimination without a discriminatory intent - a neutral rule, test or practice that falls much harder on a protected group and cannot be justified by business necessity - and the statutes under which that theory is and is not available.
Excessive ForceThe constitutional limit on how much force police may use in a stop, an arrest or a search - judged by what a reasonable officer would have done in the moment, and the reason body-camera footage decides more of these cases than testimony does.
False Arrest and Malicious ProsecutionThe claims available to a person detained without probable cause or prosecuted without it - the state torts, their constitutional counterparts, and the favourable-termination rule that decides when a malicious-prosecution claim can be brought at all.
Filing a Discrimination Charge (EEOC)The administrative step that must come before almost any federal employment-discrimination lawsuit - a charge filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or a state agency within a short statutory window, followed by a right-to-sue letter that starts the next clock.
Prisoners' Rights and the Prison Litigation Reform ActThe constitutional protections that survive incarceration - against cruel and unusual conditions, deliberate indifference to medical needs, and punishment without process - and the federal statute that makes a prisoner exhaust the prison's own grievance system before any of them can be enforced in court.
Reasonable AccommodationA change to a job, workplace or housing rule that lets a person with a disability participate equally - required unless it imposes undue hardship.
Religious Freedom (RFRA and RLUIPA)The federal statutes that require government to justify any substantial burden on religious exercise by a compelling interest pursued in the least restrictive way - stronger than the constitutional rule, and the basis of most modern religious-liberty claims by prisoners, congregations and employers.
Retaliation for Protected ActivityThe separate legal wrong of punishing a person for complaining about discrimination, reporting a violation, taking protected leave or helping in an investigation - a claim that often succeeds where the underlying complaint would not.
Section 1983 Civil Rights ClaimThe federal statute allowing someone to sue a state or local official personally for violating their constitutional rights.

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Part of the LawyerLand plain-English legal glossary. Definitions are written from primary sources - statutes and court rules - and each entry states the authority it rests on, or says plainly when the doctrine is state law with no national rule.

If you cannot afford a lawyer, civil legal aid programmes provide free help with many of these problems: civil legal aid programmes by state.

Related free reference tools: statute of limitations for a personal-injury claim, by state, quoted from each state's official text - part of LawyerLand's legal reference tools.