Supreme Court upholds key tool for fighting housing bias

Washington Post ^ | 06/25/2015 | AP

[GIdget2004]

The Supreme Court handed a major victory to the Obama administration and civil rights groups on Thursday when it upheld a key tool used for more than four decades to fight housing discrimination.

The justices ruled 5-4 that federal housing laws prohibit seemingly neutral practices that harm minorities, even without proof of intentional discrimination. The case involved an appeal from Texas officials accused of violating the Fair Housing Act by awarding federal tax credits in a way that kept low-income housing out of white neighborhoods.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote, joined the court’s four liberal members in upholding the use of so-called “disparate impact” cases.

[nathanbedford]

We have four liberal Justices who are ideologically committed to do what ever it takes to advance leftist causes. We have five Justices who actually think their job is to administer justice. Two of the five have no identifiable ideological root. They are liable to rule on any side of any issue.

Until and unless Republican presidents can identify ideological conservatives and appoint them to the supreme and inferior courts, we will continue to experience ideological judgments out of those courts. Meanwhile, respect for the rule law will radically diminish as more and more of our people come to the understanding that not justice but ideology is being administered.

Until we have an organization is effective as the NRA respecting gun rights disciplining Republican senators and forcing people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham to maintain ideological discipline, we will continue to lose case after case.

[mn-bush-man]

The way to get on the preferred list is to underperform.

Touche!! The federal government has done it in every aspect of our existence they can get their grubby, greedy, freedom-stealing hands upon. Education. Retirement. Health Care. Religious Freedom. Reproduction. Employment. Food. Drugs. Firearms. Hunting. Fishing. Water. Our Thoughts and Expressions.

These things which have been STOLEN from us are never returned to the people in the absence of revolution and/or bloodshed.

[VanDeKoik]

I see it in my own neighborhood.

Whites (most of them are left-wingers or gay (but I repeat myself)): Yards are kept, houses repainted regularly, top-tier patio furniture, lots of fancy plants.

Hispanics: Tacky house colors because they do it themselves with scrounge-up supplies, 3-5 cars in the driveway, basic yard care, houses are “ok” but never really maintained as good as they can.

Blacks: Lots of junk on the porch. Always a bunch of dudes sitting around out front in wife-beaters. neighbors always having to phone the housing inspector to cite them to get the damn grass cut. No repairs. The older black married couples are always out working in their yards and you can tell because they dont want to be associated with that.

[Proud2BeRight]

“I bet they will if you write a letter of your concerns to John Boehner.”

Thanks. On this depressing day, I needed a good laugh.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Kennedy leads with emotion and is unfit for the court. This is crazy. People can be punished based on outcomes rather than intent? Unfreakingbelievable.

[RIghtwardHo]

lol Want me to bring the burgers and beer so we can watch together?

[MinuteGal]

This is one of the biggest and most lucrative GIFTS the black-robed lawyers who sit on the SCOTUS have ever handed out on a silver platter to their fellow trial attorneys and civil rights mouthpieces across the fruited plain.

What these lawsuit-happy trial lawyers will reap in $$$ in the near future will be incalculable. Now, defendent landlords and owners won't have a chance in hell in court.

Crony capitalism even infests the highest court in the land!

Leni

[mjp]

The supreme court is infected with postmodernism. Postmodernists say that by means of deconstruction, readers of a text can ferret out its hidden or multiple meanings (polysemy). In this way, a reader’s subjective interpretation of a the text becomes more important than the text itself.Also significant is the subjectivity of the reader in determining what the author intended. Also the reader is allowed to invent new meanings. The text is freed from the tyranny of the author’s single intended meaning.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Roberts is a big fat dud in the big picture. Alito is good. Who gave us the doofus Kennedy? I can’t remember.

[Gaffer]

It was Ronald Reagan, unfortunately. I truly believe Kennedy lied during his vetting.

[ChildOfThe60s]

I believe that congress is not impotent. IMO, congress is a willing accomplice.
Proof of that is McConnell and fast track.

[tbw2]

This means affordable housing mandates for upper class and middle class neighborhoods will start.
Some will implement work arounds like counting mother in law apartments as affordable elderly housing, servants quarters as affordable housing (there was actually a rich neighborhood that did that), encouraging halfway houses for the retarded and 4 bedroom houses turned into in-home assisted living for 3-6 elderly in the house instead of Section 8 rentals.

And we’ll see the sue and settle method of putting affordable housing in upper class neighborhoods that was on hold by HUD with Dallas get finalized and then repeated across the country.

[cuban leaf]

I have to confess that this decision hit me the way it hit me when my then wife, after 20 years of marriage, kicked me out and divorced me without cause.

That is, I cried for 3 days solid, admitted that it had been very difficult for the last ten years and, most importantly, all doubt was removed regarding who she really was.

Yes, it was a very ugly divorce.

The SCOTUS made it pretty clear with their “yes, it is a tax” decision, but this decision completely removes the veil. They are exposed. From my perspective, the shark has been jumped.

And I predicted it, even though it made no legal sense.

the next 18 months is going to be a time of booming popcorn futures. It will happen so fast it will leave people dumbfounded. Lots of people.

Greece, the SCOTUS decision, TPA, China, Russia, ISIS, Global Warming, etc. So many fronts. And you can almost guarantee that this World War will be “hot” before Obama’s term is up. They know their time is short.

[cuban leaf]

Everything’s going against us.

---

And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Hence my tag line.

They know their time is short.

[Amendment10]

”… violating the Fair Housing Act ..."

The states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specfic power to regulate, tax and spend for intrastate housing purposes. This is another example where federal senators failed to protect their states by killing the bill which established the FDR era Federal Housing Act.

The 17th Amendment needs to disappear.

[cuban leaf]

Housing discrimination? I call baloney on that. What the law does is establish a preferred class of citizen. The government is playing favorites.

---

Yep.

The us is based on the foundational principle of the rights of the INDIVIDUAL. There are no “group rights” in the constitution. In fact, the very concept is unconstitutional. If you pass a law granting protection “specifically” to a “type” of person, you are neglecting the protection of everyone NOT in that type. That is the exact OPPOSITE of equal protection under the law.

It’s a very simple concept. And the whole point of the constitution.

[cuban leaf]

If won’t go to the ghetto the government will bring the ghetto to you.
This is actually one of the reasons I moved to the rural area I did. We are pretty much left alone in the sticks in KY. It may not be true in Washington state or California, but it’s true here.

I don’t even need a building permit to build a house.

[2harddrive]

It is no longer the Supreme Court. It is the EXTREME Court!

[Pecos]

America - No longer the land of equal opportunity, just the land of equal outcome. Another way “O” is ensuring there will be no American exceptionalism.

[Noumenon]

Completely sympathize with your experience. Trust me, I know.

Fortunately for both of us, we have placed ourselves at some distance from what are surely to be lively times in the urban cores and burbs.

Stay well, stay safe, and stay armed my friend.