ACTION ALERT: Republican trying to gut the Fair Housing Act

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Wednesday June 27, 2012 · 10:53 AM PDT

2012/06/27 · 10:53

I don't write here very often, but sometimes an issue comes up that is important enough to share with this group.

By way of background, the Fair Housing Act is a 1968 law that (as amended) prohibits housing discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability and familial status (the presence of children under 18 in a household). This is a bit of an oversimplification, but under the Act, one can prove discrimination under a theory of disparate treatment - i.e., that landlord INTENTIONALLY failed to rent to me because I have a disability, am a woman, am African-American, etc. Though there are several ways to prove it, that THEORY is pretty non-controversial.

What's slightly more controversial is a theory called "disparate impact." Disparate impact refers to a policy or procedure that is neutral on its face (in other words, it doesn't explicitly prohibit someone who's black or disabled from getting housing) but in practice comes down harder on some than others. The beauty of disparate impact is that you don't have to prove intent (although it's often there); all you have to show is that the policy has the impact. If the housing provider can't justify the policy and show that it's the least discriminatory way to serve its purpose, he loses.

bolgia7

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Tuesday June 29, 2010 · 8:15 AM PDT

2010/06/29 · 08:15

Good news (kind of) from my home state of Alabama: the U.S. Supreme Court has vacated the 11th Circuit decision in Siegelman's appeal and remanded it back to the 11th for reconsideration in light of the Supreme Court's recent interpretation of "honest services" fraud statutes in cases such as Skilling v. United States.

For those of you, like me, who are not Siegelman geeks, you may recall that he was Alabama's last Democratic governor, and his prosecution has been widely assumed to be politically motivated, with Karl Rove pulling the strings.

bolgia7

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Friday June 13, 2008 · 6:47 AM PDT

2008/06/13 · 06:47

Okay, I know that Tennessee is not an oasis of progressivism. It's a state not even native son Al Gore could carry, and in the Dem primaries, it went strongly for Hillary Clinton. It's also the home of freshman Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis), who is facing a primary challenge from people back home who resent that a white, Jewish man is representing a district that's 90 percent African American.

bolgia7

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Tuesday November 27, 2007 · 10:47 AM PST

2007/11/27 · 10:47

According to the Nashville Post, Democrat Mike McWherter, son of popular former Tennessee governor Ned, won't challenge Lamar Alexander in 2008. According to the story, he made the decision over the Thanksgiving holiday. This is bad news for those of us who were hoping Lamar! might be sent packing. I'm betting this decision has something to do with Lott's decision to leave the Senate and Lamar!'s decision to run for Lott's leadership position. McWherter might figure that a Senate minority whip would be hard to beat.

bolgia7

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Friday November 16, 2007 · 8:31 PM PST

2007/11/16 · 20:31

Crossposted at Cottonmouth Press

One of the newest and most repugnant features of the mortgage foreclosure crisis is the rise of "foreclosure rescue" scams. Imagine if you will a vulture picking at the bones of an almost-but-not-quite-dead rabbit. Also imagine that the vulture tells everyone (including himself) that he's "helping" the rabbit, and you get the picture.

As a fair housing attorney, I deal mostly with discrimination cases but have been peripherally involved in predatory lending issues and only somewhat aware of foreclosure rescue programs. Then I answered the phone yesterday morning.

bolgia7

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Tuesday September 25, 2007 · 11:00 PM PDT

2007/09/25 · 23:00

(Crossposted in the Cottonmouth Press)

As some of you may know about me, I have deep family ties in Jena, La. Both my parents were born and raised there, and I still have a lot of relatives there. I am white, and I am appalled at the conduct of the powers that be in perpetuating a dual system of justice in Jena. As you can imagine, I'm Googling the news for Jena every day.

Reed Walters, the Distric Attorney of LaSalle Parish, La., has an op-ed that just appeared in the New York Times online for publication in tomorrow's paper. In it he attempts to explain the decisions he's made as a prosecutor in the Jena 6 case.

While some who are inclined to agree with him might find his op-ed an articulate and convincing self-defense, its omissions are glaring.

bolgia7

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Friday September 14, 2007 · 2:24 PM PDT

2007/09/14 · 14:24

Crossposted at Cottonmouth Press

My parents were born and raised in Jena, La. Until very recently, my grandmother lived there (she now lives near my parents in another state), and I still have aunts, uncles and cousins in Jena. I have spent lots of time in Jena over my 41 years, most of them as a child. I even lived there and attended middle school for a short time in the late 70s while my family was moving. So the Jena 6 situation has really hit home for me and my family.

bolgia7

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Thursday July 19, 2007 · 3:26 PM PDT

2007/07/19 · 15:26

Crossposted at Cottonmouth Press

This morning, our esteemed pretzeldent made an appearance in Nashville to tour a bakery and to make a speech at the Opryland Hotel. My office is not even a quarter of a mile away, and I could have walked down to the corner to join the protesters waving signs for the motorcade as it passed by.

But I didn't. Instead, I was feverishly drafting a three-page letter to another attorney on behalf of one of my clients, a gentleman with a mental disability who's about to be evicted from the subsidized apartment complex where he's lived for almost 30 years.

In addition to the obvious trauma my client would face having to find a new place to live, and the adjustment difficulties all his friends and family say he will have, I had a further concern - there is damn little housing for people who are surviving on Social Security disability. Every subsidized development he's visited has told him he'll be facing a waiting list of up to six months. That means he'll be effectively homeless for a period of time, but he's one of the lucky ones whose family will find him some room on the couch if worse comes to worst.

bolgia7

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Tuesday July 10, 2007 · 8:38 PM PDT

2007/07/10 · 20:38

(written by Gita and crossposted at Cottonmouth Press)

In Alabama, you can sell guns on any street corner but you can’t sell sex toys.

That’s right. Alabama is a vibrator-free state!

Well, technically you can go across state lines and buy sex toys in Georgia and Tennessee and carry them home. But the Alabama Legislature, in its infinite wisdom and in the spirit of protecting citizens from moral turpitude, a while back banned the sale of sex toys (or "marital aids" as some lawmakers coyly call them).

bolgia7

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Sunday March 11, 2007 · 9:26 PM PDT

2007/03/11 · 21:26

According to this story in The Washington Post, a few days ago FEMA displaced dozens of families from a mobile home park in Hammond, La., with just 48 hours' notice, scattering them far from jobs and schools and creating more unnecessary upheaval for them.

Why "unnecessary"? The FEMA bureaucrats who made this decision claim they were concerned about power outages at the park, even though the power was on when the evictions occurred. There had been three outages in the park, the most recent because the bill hadn't been paid. The park's owners blame FEMA for not paying the contracted rent quickly enough. Apparently the finger-pointing made local FEMA officials angry.

The money quote:

"Quite frankly, we received press earlier that week that pointed the finger at FEMA for not paying the bills. We were getting beaten up," said Jim Stark, director of FEMA's Louisiana Transitional Recovery Office. "At this point, we said, 'Enough is enough.' "

The park would be evacuated, and quickly, FEMA officials decided. Officials began telling tenants to pack up even before the agency had decided where they would go.

bolgia7

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Tuesday July 25, 2006 · 6:11 AM PDT

2006/07/25 · 06:11

Buried in a spending bill is a proposal to name an as-yet unconstructed federal courthouse in Nashville after Dr. Video himself, Bill Frist. The courthouse would be named the "William H. Frist, M.D. Federal Courthouse," under the amendment.

The designation apparently was proposed by Thad Cochran, R-Miss., because "it would be appropriate to honor the leader before he leaves the Senate," according to Cochran's flack.

I doubt that proposal will have much support here in Nashville/Davidson County, which, along with Memphis, is one of the bluest parts of Tennessee.

I am going to propose an alternative: "The William H. Frist, M.D. Courthouse Construction Port-a-Potty." That way, Frist will still be honored in connection with the courthouse, but it'll be far more appropriate (and temporary). My brilliant partner suggests naming the local humane shelter after him.

Other options for ways to "honor the leader"?

WaPo: Ney lied to Senate investigators about helping Abramoff

bolgia7

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Thursday June 22, 2006 · 9:33 PM PDT

2006/06/22 · 21:33

The Washington Post has a story for publication tomorrow that says Bob Ney (R-Ohio) apparently lied to Senate investigators about help he had given one of Jack Abramoff's tribal clients.

The Ney story is part of the 357-page report and document dump coming out of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Read More

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