On February 11, 2021 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a memorandum titled Implementation of Executive Order 13988 on the Enforcement of the Fair Housing Act. On January 20, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 13988 on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation. The Executive Order addresses the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Bostock v Clayton County, which held that the prohibitions against sex discrimination […]
Tag: Fair Housing
SCOTUS SEXUAL ORIENTATION DECISION
On June 15, 2020 the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS), in Bostock v Clayton County, Georgia (Bostock) ruled that firing an employee for being homosexual or transgender constitutes discrimination based on the employee’s sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Bostock is an employment case in which SCOTUS determined that disparate treatment of homosexual or transgender individuals is sex discrimination. Both the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and the Fair Housing Act […]
HUD PROPOSES FAIR LENDING DISPARATE IMPACT RULE
On August 19, 2019 the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed a rule to amend HUD’s interpretation of the Fair Housing Act’s disparate impact standard contained in HUD’s existing regulation 24 C.F.R. Part 100. The proposed rule makes it more difficult for a plaintiff to bring a disparate impact case and also makes it more difficult for a plaintiff to recover punitive and exemplary damages. The proposed rule is good news for lenders […]
ONEWEST BANK REDLINING CASE
On July 29, 2019 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it has approved a Conciliation Agreement between the California Reinvestment Coalition and CIT Group, Inc., and CIT Bank, N.A., dba OneWest Bank, resolving allegations that the bank engaged in lending discrimination by “redlining” in the Los Angeles region. OneWest Bank is a retail bank with 60 branches in Southern California. The complaint, filed by the California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC), alleged […]
HAS REDLINING ENFORCEMENT RETURNED?
At the end of the Obama administration redlining consent decrees were becoming coming. Redlining cases, once the purview of large banks, had drifted down to the community bank level. Since the beginning of 2016 redlining cases have dried up, other than one case left over from the prior administration that was settled favorably for the bank. On June 13, 2009 The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of […]