Relman Colfax and Fair Housing Advocates Ask Court to Halt HUD’s and DOGE’s Termination of Grants to Fight Housing Discrimination
- At March 15, 2025
- By fhfla
- In News
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Washington, D.C.—Relman Colfax and four members of the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) announce the filing of a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This legal action follows HUD’s sudden and unlawful termination of grants disbursed under the Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP). The termination of those grants jeopardizes over $30 million in critical, congressionally authorized funding for fair housing groups to fight housing discrimination and enforce fair housing laws throughout the country.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court in the District of Massachusetts, is brought on behalf of a proposed class of more than 60 fair housing groups whose grants were abruptly terminated by HUD and DOGE on February 27, 2025. Plaintiffs have moved for a temporary restraining order (TRO).
Fair housing groups, funded by FHIP, have long served as the backbone of efforts to combat housing discrimination, enforcing the Fair Housing Act (FHA). These groups investigate housing discrimination complaints, enforce fair housing laws, assist individuals facing discrimination, educate communities about their rights, and collaborate with local governments to expand fair and affordable housing opportunities. FHIP grants–which originated from Congress’s recognition of the central role of fair housing organizations in combating housing discrimination–are a primary source of funding for fair housing groups.
Civil and Human Rights Organizations Sue Trump Administration Over Executive Orders Banning Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility and Erasing Transgender People
- At February 28, 2025
- By fhfla
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The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the National Urban League, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and the AIDS Foundation of Chicago challenging three anti-equity executive orders from President Trump related to diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and transgender people.
LDF and Lambda Legal claim these orders will severely limit the organizations’ ability to provide critical social and health services such as HIV treatment, fair housing, equal employment opportunities, affordable credit, civil rights protections, and many others. This would harm countless people across the United States, including people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, and people living with HIV.
The lawsuit claims that the administration is violating the organizations’ rights to free speech and due process and is engaging in intentional discrimination by issuing and enforcing the anti-equity orders.
The three executive orders being challenged terminate equity-related grants and forbid federally-funded entities from engaging in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs, and from recognizing the existence of transgender people. Together, these orders reverse decades of civil rights progress and pose an existential threat to the organizations that advocate for the civil rights of transgender people, and provide them shelter, services, and support.
“As a Black man living with HIV who has experienced homelessness, for years, I have relied on the lifesaving services of organizations like AIDS Foundation Chicago (AFC), who understood my intersectional identities. Now, as I work in the HIV field, I am deeply concerned about the threat these orders represent to AFC’s ability to serve our communities if they can’t even name the issues our people are facing.” said Will, an AIDS Foundation Chicago program participant and caseworker for another organization.
“In the past decade, the National Urban League has served over 22 million Americans. In the face of economic downturns and a global pandemic, our workforce programs have placed over a quarter million people in jobs and provided job training in over 90 markets, and that number grows every year,” said Marc H. Morial, President & CEO of the National Urban League. “Many of our programs are supported by the Department of Labor. The assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion is discriminatory at best and an attempt at institutionalized economic oppression at its worst.”
“We cannot end the HIV epidemic without working to address health disparities for Black, Latine, LGBTQ+ people, and transgender women. We must be able to prioritize these populations in our work – whether that’s through outreach, engagement initiatives, staff training, or resources – because they are disproportionately impacted by HIV These executive orders would prohibit us from doing that critical and lifesaving work, putting our clients’ and the broader community’s health at risk.” said John Peller, President & CEO, AIDS Foundation Chicago.
“Fair housing is a national policy of the U.S. Our nation’s fair housing principles are embedded in the Constitution and civil rights statutes secured by the blood, sweat, tears, and lives of millions of people who fought to make our Declaration of Independence and Constitution real for everyone in this country. The Constitution and our civil rights laws are centered on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. The President cannot undo the Constitution or take away our rights by affixing a signature to an executive order,” said Lisa Rice, President and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance. “The administration’s Executive Orders and OMB funding freeze memorandum have caused chaos, fear, insecurity, dysfunction, and loss of rights. The Administration’s illegal actions put all people in harm’s way, driving up the cost of housing and leaving millions exposed to discrimination, harassment, and retaliation with no structure for protection. ‘Out of Many, One’ is our national motto – any effort to divide, stoke fear and treat people unfairly is not in line with our nation’s founding principles. America is best when united and relentlessly pursuing a country where everyone, regardless of their background, has a fair chance at reaching the American Dream.”
“Beyond spreading inaccurate, dehumanizing, and divisive rhetoric, President Trump’s executive orders seek to tie the hands of organizations, like our clients, providing critical services to people who need them most,” said Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel of LDF. “The three orders we are challenging today perpetuate false and longstanding stereotypes that Black people and other underrepresented groups lack skills, talent, and merit—willfully ignoring the discriminatory barriers that prevent a true meritocracy from flourishing. We proudly stand with our clients and Lambda Legal against these unconstitutional orders and hope the court will act quickly so the arduous work of advancing and sustaining our multiracial democracy can continue without unlawful interference from the Trump administration.”
“These policies drip with contempt for transgender people, and pose a significant threat to critical health and HIV services that support marginalized communities, putting lives at risk,” said Jose Abrigo, Lambda Legal’s HIV Project Director. “These orders pose an existential threat to transgender people and the organizations that provide them with shelter and support. The orders defund organizations providing critical health and HIV services, and punish organizations for striving to improve the lives of Black people, people of color, and members of other marginalized communities. They are patently unconstitutional. Lambda Legal and LDF teamed up because the fights to end racism, the HIV epidemic, and anti-transgender bias are inseparable. For organizations like our plaintiffs providing these services, addressing these compounding barriers is essential to HIV prevention and care, and this policy would impede the work to eradicate and address the HIV epidemic.”
The lawsuit, National Urban League v. Trump, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claims that the executive orders violate the plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to free speech by censoring and chilling their views on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. The plaintiffs also claim that the executive orders are so vague that the organizations do not know what is and is not prohibited, in violation of their Fifth Amendment due process rights. Moreover, the executive orders discriminate against people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people, with particular animus towards Black people and transgender individuals, in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.
You can read the full complaint here.
Justice Department accuses six major landlords of scheming to keep rents high
- At January 07, 2025
- By fhfla
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DENVER (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department is suing several large landlords for allegedly coordinating to keep Americans’ rents high by using both an algorithm to help set rents and privately sharing sensitive information with their competitors to boost profits.
The lawsuit arrives as U.S. renters continue to struggle under a merciless housing market, with incomes failing to keep up with rent increases. The latest figures show that half of American renters spent more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities in 2022, an all-time high.
That means exhausting, day-to-day decisions between medications, groceries, school supplies and rent. It means eviction notices and protracted court cases in which children face the highest eviction rates, with 1.5 million evicted each year, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.
While the housing crisis has been assigned several causes, including a slump in homes built over the last decade, the Justice Department’s lawsuit claims major landlords are playing a part. Click here to read full story.
Justice Department Secures Third Settlement with a Non-Depository Mortgage Company to Resolve Redlining Claims in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties
- At January 07, 2025
- By fhfla
- In News
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The Justice Department announced today that The Mortgage Firm, Inc. (The Mortgage Firm) agreed to pay $1.75 million to resolve allegations that it engaged in a pattern or practice of lending discrimination by redlining predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, Florida, Metropolitan Statistical Area (Miami MSA).
Redlining is an illegal practice by which lenders avoid providing credit services to individuals living in communities of color because of the race, color or national origin of residents in those communities.
“Non-depository institutions, including mortgage companies, are now originating a higher share of loans to homebuyers than banks and credit unions,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “With this trend comes the obligation to ensure full compliance with our federal laws that prohibit redlining. By denying predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the greater Miami area access to credit, The Mortgage Firm violated the law, denied communities equal access to credit and exacerbated the racial wealth gap. This settlement will provide impacted communities in Miami with expanded access to homeownership, and makes clear that no matter the type of financial institution — bank, credit union or mortgage company — the department is committed to rooting out redlining across the country.”
“Our efforts to protect everyone’s civil rights is never ending,” said U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the Southern District of Florida. “The unlawful practice of lending discrimination is not merely a thing of the past, but persists in this country, to include within the Southern District of Florida. Our office is fully committed in ensuring that every person living in the Southern District of Florida, to include residents in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, can achieve the American dream of building wealth through home ownership. We will continue to work with the Civil Rights Division to hold those lenders accountable who engage in unlawful discriminatory practices in our diverse district.”
The Mortgage Firm is a non-depository mortgage company headquartered in Altamonte Springs, Florida. The complaint, filed today in the Southern District of Florida, alleges that The Mortgage Firm violated the Fair Housing Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act by failing to provide equal access to mortgage lending services to majority- and high-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Miami MSA and discouraging people seeking credit in those communities from obtaining home loans. The Mortgage Firm located its offices in predominantly white neighborhoods and took inadequate steps to market to and develop referral networks within Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. As a result, The Mortgage Firm generated mortgage loan applications in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Miami MSA at rates far below peer institutions.
The proposed consent order, which awaits court approval, would require The Mortgage Firm to:
- Conduct a Community Credit Needs Assessment to identify the credit needs of residents of predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Miami MSA and to consider the results of that assessment to develop future loan programs, marketing campaigns and outreach efforts.
- Provide $1.75 million for a loan subsidy program to offer affordable home purchase, refinance and home improvement loans in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Miami MSA. The program may provide lower interest rates, down payment assistance, closing cost assistance or payment of initial mortgage insurance premiums.
- Conduct a detailed assessment of its fair lending program in the Miami MSA, specifically as it relates to fair lending obligations and lending in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
- Enhance its fair lending training and staffing to ensure equal access to credit is provided across The Mortgage Firm’s market area, including by maintaining a Director of Community Lending.
- Expand its outreach and advertising efforts by maintaining an office location in a majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhood in Miami-Dade County, translating its website into Spanish and requiring all of its loan officers in the Miami MSA to engage in marketing to majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
- Bolster connections with the community and build referral sources in predominately Black and Hispanic neighborhoods by providing four outreach events per year, six financial education seminars per year and partnering with one or more community partner to increase access to credit in predominately Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Miami MSA.
The Justice Department opened this investigation into The Mortgage Firm’s lending practices after receiving a referral from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This settlement marks the Justice Department’s 16th redlining settlement under the Combating Redlining Initiative, and the third non-depository institution to reach a redlining settlement with the department. Non-depository lenders, which are not traditional banks and do not provide typical banking services, engage in mortgage lending and now make the majority of mortgages in this country. Under the Combating Redlining Initiative, the department has secured over $153 million in relief for communities of color that have been the victims of lending discrimination. This historic amount of relief is expected to generate over $1 billion in investment to address unequal access to credit in communities of color across the country.
