Housingwire, May 10, 2018: HUD signals changes could be coming to disparate impact rule.
The 2015 ruling by the Supreme Court upheld and established that the Fair Housing Act allows lawsuits based on disparate impact, meaning a law or practice can be determined to have a discriminatory effect even if it wasn’t based on a discriminatory purpose.
Basically, the ruling establishes that a lender’s practices can be deemed as discriminatory in the eyes of the law (specifically the Fair Housing Act) even if the lender didn’t purposefully discriminate.
And while the Supreme Court upheld the use of disparate impact as a legal means to establish liability for discriminatory actions, the court’s decision did not specifically rule on HUD’s policy.
Now, HUD is preparing to ask the public to comment on whether its rule (….) is “consistent” with the Supreme Court’s decision (…).
