Waples Mobile Home Park Limited Partnership, et al. v. Rosy Giron de Reyes, et al.

In Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2507 (2015), this Court concluded that the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) proscribes disparate-impact discrimination in the provision or regulation of housing. The Court stressed, however, that, in order to state a prima facie case of disparate-impact discrimination under the FHA, plaintiffs must plead facts that show a “robust causality” between the allegedly unlawful policy and an impact imposed disproportionately on a protected group. Id. at 2523. The question presented here is: Whether a plaintiff can allege a prima facie case of disparate-impact discrimination on the basis of race or national origin under the FHA against a landlord’s leasing policy that screens out undocumented aliens, where the landlord predominantly rents to Latino tenants, and the only factual allegation of disparate impact is that undocumented aliens in the geographic vicinity of the landlord’s property happen to be disproportionately Latino.