HUD Restores Obama-Era Disparate Impact Rule
On March 17, 2023, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced it submitted its Final Rule entitled Restoring HUD’s Discriminatory Effects Standard for publication in the Federal Register; it will go into effect 30 days after publication.
As its name suggests, the Final Rule restores the Obama-era, 2013 version of HUD’s disparate impact rule, rescinding the agency’s 2020 policy, which governs federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) cases on the basis of disparate impact theory. Under disparate impact theory, a rental housing provider can be sued if the owner or operator implements a policy that is neutral on its face but nonetheless has an unintended, discriminatory effect on members of a protected class under the FHA…Read more.