National

Supreme Court Sharply Divided Over Housing Bias Cases

Published

11 years ago

January 21, 2015

Oakland Post

Chief Justice John Roberts (AP Photo)

SAM HANANEL, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court appeared sharply divided Wednesday in a debate over a decades-old strategy for fighting discrimination in housing.

Chief Justice John Roberts expressed serious doubts during a one-hour argument that the 1968 Fair Housing Act can be used to ban housing or lending practices without any proof of intent to discriminate.

But Justice Antonin Scalia, who usually aligns with Roberts and other conservatives, asked tough questions of both sides, making it tough to determine how the court might rule in a case that has steep ideological divisions.

The court’s four liberal justices defended the use of so-called “disparate impact” lawsuits that allege even race-neutral policies can have a harmful effect on minority groups.

Civil rights organizations have speculated that the court took up the case to knock out such lawsuits, which have long been criticized by banks, mortgage companies and conservative groups.

The case involves an appeal from officials accused of awarding federal housing tax credits in a way that steered low-income housing into mostly poor, black neighborhoods in Dallas and generally kept the units out of wealthier white enclaves.

A Dallas-based fair housing group, Inclusive Communities Project Inc., sued the Texas Department of Housing and Community Development in 2008. The group alleged that agency policies were keeping Dallas neighborhoods segregated and denying blacks a chance to move into safer neighborhoods with better schools.

The housing advocacy group couldn’t prove Texas officials were intentionally biased. But a federal appeals court said the group could use statistics to show the effect of the policies still harmed black residents, in violation of the Fair Housing Act.

“It is very difficult to decide what impact is good and what impact is bad,” Roberts said. What if one community wants to build low-income housing to revitalize minority neighborhoods, while another wants to integrate white areas, he asked. “Which is the bad thing to do?”

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who was arguing in favor of disparate impact, said both plans may ultimately pass muster. Under the test that’s been in place for nearly 40 years, once a disparity is shown, a court must decide whether one race-neutral policy could be replaced with another race-neutral policy.

But Roberts pressed Verrilli with the same question three times, complaining that he wasn’t getting an answer.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said it seemed “very odd to me” that disparate impact could work in either case.

Scott Keller, the Texas Solicitor General, said there was no clear language authorizing discriminatory impact lawsuits when the housing law was passed in 1968.

But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called that argument “a little artificial” because the theory was not mainstream until the Supreme Court approved its use for employment discrimination cases in 1971.

Scalia told Keller that looking at the “grand goals” of Congress in 1968 to eliminate segregated housing, it seemed possible that lawmakers thought disparate impact cases were acceptable. But later, Scalia told Michael Daniel, lawyer for the Texas housing group, that “racial disparity is not racial discrimination.”

“The fact that the NFL is largely black players is not discrimination,” Scalia said.

Justice Stephen Breyer noted that every appeals court to consider the question for the past 40 years has found disparate impact acceptable in the housing context.

“Why when something is so well-established throughout the United States should the court come in and change it?” he asked Keller.

Texas officials say disparate impact claims would essentially force them to make race-conscious decisions to avoid liability. And while disparate impact is allowed under employment discrimination cases, they say it is not explicitly mentioned in the Fair Housing Act.

Texas has won support from business groups, including the Mortgage Bankers Association, the American Financial Services Association and others arguing that federal housing law should punish only intentional acts of discrimination.

But fair housing advocates say eliminating such claims means courts will recognize only the crudest forms of intentional discrimination and not more subtle forms of bias that persist today.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

Video of New Jersey Man Shot by Police Raises Questions

Don't Miss

Few Candidates File for Ferguson Election Despite Protests

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of April 8 – 14, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 8 – 14, 2026

Published

19 hours ago

April 10, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of April 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of April 1 – 7, 2026

Published

5 days ago

April 6, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

Black Artists in America, Installation Three Wraps at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens

TRI-STATE DEFENDER — With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

Published

3 weeks ago

March 24, 2026

admin

By Candace A. Gray | Tri-State Defender

The tulips gleefully greet those who enter the gates at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens on an almost spring day. More than 650,000 bulbs of various hues are currently on display. And they are truly breathtaking.

Inside the gallery, and equally as breathtaking, is the “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” exhibit, which runs through Sunday, March 29. This is the third installment of a three-part series that started years ago and illustrates part of the Black experience through visual arts in the 20th century.

“This story picks up where part two left off,’’ said Kevin Sharp, the Linda W. and S. Herbert Rhea director for the Dixon. “This era is when we really start to see the emergence of these important Black artists’ agency and freedom shine through. They start to say and express what they want to, and it was a really beautiful time.”

With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

“Though [Davis] was from LA, he actually lived in Memphis for a decade,” said Sharp. “He was a dean at Memphis College of Art, and later opened the first gallery in New York owned and operated by black curators.”

Another featured artist is former NFL player, Ernie Barnes. His work is distinctive. Where have you seen one of his most popular paintings, Sugar Shack? On the end scene and credits of the hit show “Good Times.” His piece Saturday Night, Durham, North Carolina, 1974 is in this collection.

Memphis native James Little’s “The War Baby: The Triptych” is among more than 50 works featured in “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, the final installment of a three-part series highlighting the impact and evolution of Black artists through 2011.

The exhibit features other artists with Memphis ties, including abstract painter James Little, who was raised in a segregated Memphis and attended Memphis Academy of Art (before it was Memphis College of Art). He later moved to New York, became a teacher and an internationally acclaimed fixture in the art world in 2022 when he was named a Whitney Biennial selected artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Other artists like Romare Bearden, who had a Southern experience but lived up North, were featured in all three installments.

“During this period of time, he was a major figure,” said Sharp. “He wrote one of the first books on the history of African American art during a time when there were more Black academics, art teachers, more Black everything!”

Speaking of Black educators, Sharp said the head curator behind this tri-part series and Dixon’s partner in the arts is Earnestine Jenkins, Ph.D., an art history professor at the University of Memphis, who also earned a Master of Arts degree from Memphis State University (now UofM). “We began working with Dr. Jenkins in 2018,” he said.

Sharp explained that it takes a team of curators, registrars, counterparts at other museums, and more, about three years to assemble an exhibit like this. It came together quite seamlessly, he added. Each room conjured up more jaw-dropping “wows” than the one before it. Each piece worked with the others to tell the story of Black people and their collective experience during this time period.

One of the last artists about whom Sharp shared information was Bettye Saar, who will turn 100 years old this year. She’s been working in Los Angeles for 80 years and is finally getting her due. Her medium is collages or assemblages, and an incredible work of hers is on display. She’s married to an artist and has two daughters, also artists.

The exhibit catalogue bears some of these artists’ stories, among other scholarly information.

The exhibit, presented by the Joe Orgill Family Fund for Exhibitions, is culturally and colorfully rich. It is a must see and admission to the Dixon is free.

Visit https://www.dixon.org/ to learn more.

Fun Facts: An original James Little design lives in the flooring of the basketball court at Tom Lee Park, and he makes and mixes his own paint colors.