Discriminatory rental housing and employment practices

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August 21, 2:49 PM

by Matthew Nelson, Business Law Examiner

 

 

Welcome back to “Landlord 101,” which helps small-scale landlords avoid common pitfalls associated with having tenants.

My first article was equivalent to an audition for what I compare to talk radio for landlords that also addresses more general business law topics. The attorney’s equivalent of Spiderman’s “spidey sense” kicked in when I was discussing that submission with my contact at the National Examiner, and I asked about my potential liability if someone asserted that something that I wrote was libelous. I quickly answered my own question, and the principles apply equally to advertisements that landlords place for tenants and that govern employment relationships.

The deciding factor regarding liability is who reviews the material into what is commonly known as the marketplace of ideas, and an ongoing crackdown on landlords for discriminatory advertising makes this topic relevant. An example is a court decision that was issued in California earlier this year that concluded that Craigslist could not be held liable for what some people considered to be a discriminatory advertisement for a small apartment.

The California court reasoned that Craigslist conducted very minimal, if any, review of the content that landlords and millions of other people submitted for that website. This contrasts with websites that direct advertisers to express any bias that they have regarding potential tenants. The idea is that a person or business should not face liability for material over which he, she, or it exerts little or no control.

You will learn much more about the federal Fair Housing Act and more general discrimination-related topics over the next several months, but our current concerns are the prohibition against general business practices and advertising that express bias based on someone’s protected characteristic. Primary protected characteristics include race, national origin, gender, and religion.

It is enough to know for our current purposes that merely describing an apartment’s or a house’s physical characteristics is a good way to avoid a claim of discriminatory advertising. In the California lawsuit referred to above, the trouble started when the landlord’s Craigslist advertisement that described the small apartment as being well-suited for one or two professionals was interpreted as expressing illegal bias against tenants with children.

The California experience and many others that this blog will discuss show a need to be extremely neutral regarding any general business or  tenant-related activity. It is recommended as well that you not express any potentially prejudicial opinions around any type of workplace, while on rental property that you own, or when talking to tenants or employees; such statements might be used against you in a court of law.

My e-mail address is nelsonexaminer@gmail.com; you are encouraged to write with questions, comments, and concerns. I ask that you please forgive me if I do not respond and/or it takes a while for this page to address your question. It is important to remember as well that nothing in my articles or that I write in an e-mail can be considered legal advice or can be the basis for forming an attorney-client relationship.

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