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Fair Housing Act

The following summaries are of recent published decisions of the California appellate courts, the Ninth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court. The summaries are presented without regard to whether Severson & Werson represented a party in the case.

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Paleny v. Fireplace Products U.S., Inc. (2024) 103 Cal.App.5th 199

The FEHA does not protect a female employee against discrimination or harassment for undergoing oocyte (egg) retrieval procedures to donate eggs to others or freeze them for her own future use.  At least if those medical procedures are not needed to overcome infertility or some similar medical condition, they are not pregnancy or pregnancy-related, nor a disability and so are… Read More

Neeble-Diamond v. Hotel Calif. By the Sea, LLC (2024) 99 Cal. App. 5th 551

Under Gov. Code 12965(b), (c)(6), the award of attorney fees and costs to a prevailing defendant in a FEHA case is discretionary but governed by the rule that the defendant may recover fees and costs only when the claim was frivolous.  This decision holds that since the trial court must exercise its discretion, the prevailing defendant cannot claim costs by… Read More

Crenshaw Subway Coal. v. City of L.A., No. B309288, 2022 Cal. App. LEXIS 175 (Ct. App. Mar. 3, 2022)

A group representing the residents in the project area sued under the federal Fair Housing Act and California FEHA, claiming that the City's redevelopment plan for the area had a disparate impact on the mostly minority group residents because redevelopment would lead to gentrification, a rise in rents and the displacement of residents from the area.  This decision holds that… Read More

City of Oakland v. Wells Fargo & Co., No. 19-15169, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 29261 (9th Cir. Sep. 28, 2021)

Following Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami (2017) 137 S.Ct. 1296, this decision holds that Oakland failed to allege facts showing its harm was proximately caused by Wells Fargo's alleged violation of the Fair Housing Act (42 USC 3613) by discriminating against Black and Hispanic borrowers, steering them to higher cost loans and loans with features that made… Read More

Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami

Plaintiff city sufficiently alleged standing to sue by averring that defendant banks' lending to African-Americans and Latinos on less favorable terms than white Anglos led to a tide of foreclosures in minority neighborhoods, lowering property values and thus the city's tax revenues while also requiring greater expenditures by the city to police and maintain the gutted neighborhoods; but further consideration… Read More