Fair housing: protected classes and the federal fair housing laws

Federal fair housing protections

The Fair Housing Act protects race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, and disability (the statute uses handicap). Race and color are distinct categories. Familial status generally includes children under 18 living with a parent, legal custodian, or authorized designee; it also protects pregnancy and people securing legal custody. Age and marital status are not separately listed federal classes. State and local laws may add protection.

A dwelling includes residential structures and vacant land offered for residential construction; a family can be one individual.

Recognize the conduct

Prohibited conduct includes discriminatory refusals to negotiate, unequal terms or services, discriminatory advertisements, and false statements of unavailability. Steering directs housing choices based on a protected characteristic. Blockbusting seeks profit by inducing sales or rentals through representations about protected groups entering a neighborhood. Redlining restricts lending or related services based on a neighborhood's protected characteristics. Consistently applied neutral financial qualifications are different from protected-class discrimination.

Disability: rules versus structures

Disability includes a substantially limiting impairment, a record of one, or being regarded as having one; current illegal controlled-substance use is excluded. A reasonable accommodation changes a rule or service, such as a necessary assistance-animal exception to a no-pets policy. A reasonable modification physically changes premises, such as grab bars. Under the Fair Housing Act, necessary reasonable modifications to existing premises generally are at the disabled person's expense; reasonable restoration of a rental's interior may be required.

Read exemptions narrowly

Certain qualifying owner transactions have limited exemptions, but the discriminatory-advertising prohibition remains. Qualifying older-person housing is exempt from familial-status requirements, not race or disability requirements. The 55-and-older route requires at least 80% of occupied units to have at least one resident 55 or older, qualifying policies, and age verification. Noncommercial religious housing and genuine private-club lodging have narrow statutory exceptions.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. § 1982, separately protects citizens' equal rights in real and personal property against racial discrimination. Fair Housing Act owner exemptions do not remove that protection. Identify the class, conduct, and scope of an exception before answering.