scholarly journals Civil Rights vs. Civil Liberties? The Legality of State Court Lawsuits under the Fair Housing Act

1996 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1607
Author(s):  
David Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
State Court ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
Fair Housing Act

Images of Race, Class, and Markets: Rethinking the Origin of U.S. Fair Housing Policy

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mara S. Sidney
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Executive Order ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
Housing Discrimination ◽  
The North ◽  
American Values ◽  
Fair Housing Act ◽  
Housing Professionals ◽  
The 1960S

As the first national law to address racial discrimination in housing, the 1968 Fair Housing Act was truly a landmark piece of legislation. It prohibited homeowners, real-estate agents, lenders, and other housing professionals from engaging in a range of practices they had commonly used to keep neighborhoods racially segregated, such as refusing to sell or rent to a person because of his or her race, lying about the availability of a dwelling, or blockbusting (inducing white owners to sell by telling them that blacks were moving into the neighborhood). The last of the 1960s-era civil rights laws, the Fair Housing Act tackled the arena long felt to be the most sensitive to whites. Intense controversy, demonstrations, and violence over fair housing issues had occurred in many cities and states since at least the 1940s. Although John F. Kennedy promised during his presidential campaign to end housing discrimination “with the stroke of a pen,” once elected, he waited two years to sign a limited executive order. In 1966, a fair housing bill supported by President Johnson failed in Congress. Unlike other civil rights bills, the issue of housing evoked opposition not just from the South but also from the North. Opponents claimed that it challenged basic American values such as “a man's home is his castle”; to supporters, the symbolism of homeownership as “the American Dream” only underscored the importance of ensuring that housing was available to all Americans, regardless of race.

The Political Economy of State Fair Housing Laws before 1968

2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Collins
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
African American Population ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Fair Housing Act ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
Historical Accounts

The combined influence of the Great Migration of African Americans and the civil rights movement propelled the drive for fair housing legislation, which attempted to curb overt discrimination in housing markets. This drive culminated in the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968. By that time, 57 percent of the U.S. population and 41 percent of the African American population already resided in states with a fair housing law. This article uses hazard models to analyze the diffusion of state fair housing legislation and to shed new light on the combination of economic and political forces that facilitated the laws' adoption. Outside the South, states with larger union memberships, more Jewish residents, and more NAACP members passed fair housing laws sooner than others. Including controls for a variety of competing factors does not undermine the estimates, and historical accounts of the legislative campaigns support the article's interpretation.

Bureaucratic Effectiveness and Civil Rights Enforcement

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Eric M. Wilk ◽  
Charles M. Lamb
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Fair Housing Act ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Dollar Amount ◽  
Local Agencies ◽  
The U.S

This article compares federal, state, and local civil rights agencies’ effectiveness in enforcing the Fair Housing Act. Two factors primarily define effective enforcement: whether agencies’ conciliation efforts are more likely to lead to agreements between the parties involved in complaints and whether agencies are more likely to provide remedies to complainants in cases in which there is cause to believe discrimination occurred. The analysis shows that state and local agencies are generally more effective than the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) both at conciliating complaints and at providing remedies. HUD does appear to be more effective than state and local agencies in terms of the dollar amount of monetary relief awarded when successful conciliations occur, but HUD’s remedial effectiveness disappears after controlling for the likelihood of successful conciliations.

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and the Inclusive Communities Project Case

2018 ◽  
pp. 77-91
Author(s):  
Philip D. Tegeler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Federal State ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
Economic Segregation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Fair Housing Act ◽  
State And Local

The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) provisions of the 1968 Fair Housing Act require affirmative steps by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and its grantees to promote residential integration. By the beginning of the Obama administration, compliance with this provision had become an empty bureaucratic ritual for many jurisdictions and was identified as a key civil rights reform for the new HUD secretary. The final AFFH rule, issued in 2015, represents an important modernization of the Fair Housing Act’s AFFH provision and also signals a new kind of partnership among federal, state, and local governments to address racial and economic segregation.

scholarly journals Remediating Racism for Rent: A Landlord’s Obligation Under the FHA

2021 ◽  
pp. 1757
Author(s):  
Mollie Krent
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Housing Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
Fair Housing Act ◽  
Unique Nature ◽  
Tenant Relationship

The Fair Housing Act (FHA) is an expansive and powerful piece of legislation that furthers equal housing in the United States by ferreting out discrimination in the housing market. While the power of the Act is well recognized by courts, the full contours of the FHA are still to be refined. In particular, it remains unsettled whether and when a landlord can be liable for tenant-on-tenant harassment. This Note argues, first, that the FHA does recognize liability in such a circumstance and, second, that a landlord should be subject to liability for her negligence in such a circumstance. Part I illustrates how the purpose and text of the FHA and analogous civil rights provisions suggest that a landlord should be held liable for her response to tenant-on-tenant harassment. Part II analyzes the standards of liability for tenant-on-tenant harassment that currently exist in the context of the FHA. Part III argues that a negligence standard of liability best accounts for the special status of the home and the unique nature of the landlord-tenant relationship.

From Property Rights to Liberty Rights: We the Corporations, A Review Essay

2021 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-340
Author(s):  
Laura Phillips Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
State Action ◽  
Unequal Treatment ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
We The People

A long-standing, and deeply controversial, question in constitutional law is whether or not the Constitution's protections for “persons” and “people” extend to corporations. Law professor Adam Winkler's We the Corporations chronicles the most important legal battles launched by corporations to “win their constitutional rights,” by which he means both civil rights against discriminatory state action and civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution (p. xvii). Today, we think of the former as the right to be free from unequal treatment, often protected by statutory laws, and the latter as liberties that affect the ability to live one's life fully, such as the freedom of religion, speech, or association. The vim in Winkler's argument is that the court blurred this distinction when it applied liberty rights to nonprofit corporations and then, through a series of twentieth-century rulings, corporations were able to advance greater claims to liberty rights. Ultimately, those liberty rights have been employed to strike down significant bipartisan regulations, such as campaign finance laws, which were intended to advance democratic participation in the political process. At its core, this book asks, to what extent do “we the people” rule corporations and to what extent do they rule us?

Faith and Fair Housing

2013 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-316
Author(s):  
Bruce G. Merritt
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Property Values ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
Ballot Initiative ◽  
White Neighborhoods ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
Fair Housing Act ◽  
Minority Families

In 1964, a California ballot initiative, Proposition 14, aiming to rescind a recent fair-housing act, proved controversial. Supporters argued that property owners had a right to sell to whomever they wished. An undercurrent addressed the supposed deleterious impact to property values if minority families could move into white neighborhoods. Racist motives were denied. This article analyzes the divisive effects of the issue on one southern California church community as it pondered the role of organized religion in matters of social justice.

scholarly journals The Legacy of the 1968 Fair Housing Act

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 571-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas S. Massey
Keyword(s):  
Fair Housing ◽  
Fair Housing Act

“A Woman's World”: The University of California, Berkeley, During the Second World War

2008 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Dorn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Home Front ◽  
University Of California ◽  
World War ◽  
Young Women's Christian Association ◽  
Christian Fellowship ◽  
The University

The fairer sex takes over and the campus becomes a woman's world. They step in and fill the shoes of the departing men and they reveal a wealth of undiscovered ability. The fate of the A.S.U.C. [Associated Students of the University of California] and its activities rests in their hands and they assume the responsibility of their new tasks with sincerity and confidence. —Blue and Gold, University of California, Berkeley, 1943During World War II, female students at the University of California, Berkeley—then the most populous undergraduate campus in American higher education—made significant advances in collegiate life. In growing numbers, women enrolled in male-dominated academic programs, including mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, as they prepared for home-front employment in fields traditionally closed to them. Women also effectively opposed gendered restrictions on extracurricular participation, filling for the first time such influential campus leadership positions as the presidency of Berkeley's student government and editorship of the university's student newspaper. Female students at Berkeley also furthered activist causes during the war years, with the University Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) serving as one of the most popular outlets for their political engagement. Historically rooted in a mission of Christian fellowship, by the 1940s the University YWCA held progressive positions on many of the nation's central social, political, and economic issues. Throughout the war years, women dedicated to promoting civil liberties, racial equality, and international understanding led the organization in its response to two of the most egregious civil rights violations in U.S. history: racial segregation and Japanese internment.

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