Legal Briefing: 2024 Federal Fair Housing Cases

Every January, the Coach offers a Scorecard briefing that breaks down the previous year’s key federal fair housing cases and their impact on you. Our Scorecard counts only reported federal court cases in which a landlord was sued for allegedly violating the Fair Housing Act (FHA). There were 85 such cases in 2024, in line with previous years’ totals. 

That may seem like a drop in the bucket given that HUD receives approximately 30,000 fair housing complaints each year. But there’s a big difference between a complaint and a reported court case. Most of the former get dropped, resolved, or dismissed out of hand. Only a few actually make it to court and get reported. These cases are where the rubber meets the road and, therefore, the focus of our Scorecard. 

To further distill the analysis, the Scorecard omits cases of limited relevance to most landlords, including: 

• FHA cases against state and local governments, e.g., for discriminatory zoning;
• FHA cases against banks, mortgage lenders, and other financial institutions; 
• State fair housing cases; and 
• Settlements of FHA claims. 

How the Cases Get Decided

Going to court isn’t necessarily the same thing as going to trial. In the FHA context, the vast majority of cases pose the threshold question of whether a discrimination complaint should even go to trial. More precisely, most Scorecard cases aren’t the results of a trial but a ruling on a landlord’s motion for summary judgment—basically a ruling in favor of the landlord on the law on the basis of the pleadings (or complaint), without a trial. The landlord’s argument: There’s no point in holding a trial because even if everything the complaint alleges is true, we still wouldn’t be guilty of an FHA violation. 

Example: A rental applicant claims she was rejected because she voted for or against Donald Trump. A court would likely grant the landlord summary judgment because political belief isn’t a protected class under the FHA. 

In the real world, the summary judgment ruling, even though it’s only a threshold determination of whether a trial should be held, is the moment of truth in most FHA cases. Although plaintiffs can appeal, winning on summary judgment typically enables the landlord to put the case behind it. But if the complaint survives summary judgment and gets the greenlight to go to trial, the plaintiff assumes the upper hand and forces the landlord to make a tough decision: Risk a trial or pay out money to settle the case. 

We found 85 reported 2024 cases accusing a landlord of violating the FHA. Of these, the landlord prevailed in 49 and lost in 27; 9 of the cases were split decisions. The roughly 2:1 ratio of landlord victory is in line with 2023 findings. 

The takeaway from this is that nearly half of all the FHA claims filed against landlords in the past two years have been found as lacking in legal validity. Caveat: Among the nearly 50 cases where a court dismissed an FHA claim against the landlord for lacking legal validity, the court gave the plaintiff the chance to fix the problem and refile the claim. Result: The landlord’s summary judgment victory didn’t definitively end the case. 

FHA SCORECARD TOTALS, 2022 to 2024

Source: Fair Housing Coach

For the six key lessons from the 2024 Scorecard cases, see our January lesson, "2024 Fair Housing Litigation Scorecard," available to premium subscribers here.