Disparate impact victory: Texas Department of Housing
There has been so much SCOTUS news in the past two days that it’s easy to ignore cases that ordinarily would be of enormous importance but have been overshadowed by others. One is the disparate impact case, otherwise known by the unwieldy moniker Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. In it, the Court ruled (with Kennedy once again casting the deciding vote) that:
…the FHA [Fair Housing Act] reaches otherwise lawful activities which, while free of discriminatory intent, are nonetheless found to have a “disparate impact” on minority groups. In so holding, the Court agreed with decades of unanimous federal appeals-court precedents that arrived at the same conclusion.
Three things stand out here. The first is that Justice Kennedy, an unelected official, has become one of the most powerful people in the US. The second is that disparate impact, of extremely dubious scientific value, has now become enshrined. The third is that the Court has no trouble ruling that statutes don’t mean what they say, both in the Obamacare case and now in the case of the Fair Housing Act, and that with Obamacare we can look at generalized legislative intent and go with that instead of the wording of the law, and that in the disparate impact case we must ignore the intent of the Fair Housing Act in order to get the progressive result we want.
There is a tiny sliver of a caveat in the case, but I doubt it will matter, because it’s hard not to notice that these things tend to get expanded and expanded and expanded rather than contracted:
At the same time, the high court cabined disparate impact liability to those policies that pose “artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers.” That important qualifier may ultimately determine the outcome of this case on remand. And the Court further reminded the government and lower federal courts that important constitutional considerations limit the remedies available for disparate impact liability under the FHA.
The Fair Housing Act had an intent to ban intentional discrimination:
…[T]he [Texas] case hinged on the meaning of Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, commonly known as the Fair Housing Act. The FHA makes it unlawful to “refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer, or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.” 42 U.S.C. § 3604(a). The FHA further prohibits discrimination “against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith,” on account of those same protected characteristics. Id. § 3604(b). While the FHA clearly prohibits intentional discrimination, whether or not the statute encompasses disparate-impact liability had never been squarely considered by the Court…
Undoubtedly the weakest part of the majority’s rationale is its reliance on Congress’s 1988 amendments to the FHA as a basis to conclude that Congress somehow “ratified” disparate impact liability. Because Congress knew at the time that nine courts of appeals had held the FHA encompasses disparate-impact liability, the Court reasons, three exemptions from liability included in the 1988 amendments would have been “superfluous” had Congress assumed that disparate impact liability was unavailable. But Justice Alito gets the better part of the argument in his dissent, pointing out that the official view of the United States in 1988, manifest by its formal position in the Supreme Court and many lower courts, was that the FHA prohibits only intentional discrimination. As Justice Alito concludes: “It is implausible that the 1988 Congress was aware of certain lower court decisions [allowing for disparate impact] but oblivious to the United States’ considered and public view that those decisions were wrong.” And the Court has consistently rejected identical arguments about “implicit ratification” in other cases. It is a testament to the force of Justice Alito’s argument on this point that the majority offers nothing in response but silence.
Silence is adequate, though, at least in practical terms. When you have the numbers and therefore the power, you don’t need the arguments.
Does that mean that such things as credit scores, credit record, employment history, debt level, and down payment level can not be applied to blacks? All of those variables would have a disparate impact on minorities.
We know what happened the last time we gave home loans to people who did not qualify by traditional measures. Do we have two standards for loan qualification to avoid the wrath of the Feds?
Mr. Frank:
I don’t think that’s new. Isn’t that part of the way the bubble got started in the first place?
Yes, but I don’t think that race was a driving force. It seems that anyone who could fog a mirror and lie about income could get a loan. When the crash came, it may have been harder on minorities with more debt and lower incomes.
Good Job Grrrls…
you got what you want…
“Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism.” – Catharine A. MacKinnon
the past two elections are the last hurrah of this group… they have sealed their fates
Census: More Minority Children Than Whites, More Whites Dying Than Being Born
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/25/census-more-minority-children-than-whites-more-whites-dying-than-being-born/
i wont bother explaining other than they are now irrelevent or soon will be and that will be something interesting to watch over the next 10 years…
Mr. Frank Says: Does that mean that such things as credit scores, credit record, employment history, debt level, and down payment level can not be applied to blacks? All of those variables would have a disparate impact on minorities.
already done.. just as police, fire, and school things have been done
the latest version of this is that air traffic controllers dont have to past the AT-SAT for a job if they are black…
Prior to 2014, the FAA put a premium on hiring air traffic control candidates from College Training Initiative (CTI) schools. Several dozen schools participated in the program.
then…
CTI students were not guaranteed jobs – they still were required to pass an AT-SAT aptitude test and obtain specific and specialized training. This year, the rules changed and the FAA opened up hiring to everyone.
That means people right off the street, with no prior aviation training or skills, could apply. They also added a biographical assessment questionnaire for any potential candidate.
Brigida told us he scored 100 percent on his aptitude test. However, because he failed the biographical questionnaire, or as he describes it, a diversity test, the FAA didn’t hire him.
this disparate impact thing will negate the laws that intend to fix the issues… like the SAFE TOWERS Act
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i wont bore you with the similar actions of Lenin and others doing the same thing and destroying the functional economy of Russia with it…
Mr. Frank Says: Yes, but I don’t think that race was a driving force. It seems that anyone who could fog a mirror and lie about income could get a loan.
no… race was the driving force, but not in the way you would think.
the way it worked was that if a bank did not have enough loans to blacks, then the bank was said to be redlining and the protesters showed up and hollared racist bank racist bank…
Redlining
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
In the United States, Redlining is the practice of denying services, either directly or through selectively raising prices, to residents of certain areas based on the racial or ethnic makeups of those areas. While some of the most famous examples of redlining regard denying financial services such as banking or insurance
During the heyday of redlining, the areas most frequently discriminated against were black inner city neighborhoods. For example, in Atlanta in the 1980s, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles by investigative-reporter Bill Dedman showed that banks would often lend to lower-income whites but not to middle- or upper-income blacks
he use of blacklists is a related mechanism also used by redliners to keep track of groups, areas, and people that the discriminating party feels should be denied business or aid or other transactions. In the academic literature, redlining falls under the broader category of credit rationing.
The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 further required banks to apply the same lending criteria in all communities
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now here the way it went… if you apply the same criteria… like in college admissions… blacks are the lowest group that would be present… spanish next… the top groups would be chinese, and jews… with whites in the middle.
so if you use the same standards, you get very unequal outcomes… but ince your not allowed to make any arguments as to natural unequal things, like nazi germany who started this disparate impact thing (see my post years ago, but sorry, the empirical proof of the post was cut out by neo and i have yet to refind the newspaper articles in the college archives online again)
so, its assumed that since we are equal, there should be an equal distribution. you not allowed to say we are different, so you have to claim that any overrepresented group is either cheating or racist (same thing)… (jews made up 14% of the population in germany but controled over 40% of the busineses and banks… sound familiar? the feminists then adopted it in terms of all kinds of things – but never correct the false basis for the putsch)
anyway… so they had and have to change the rules and disenfranchise the poor of the target group… this is why i did not go to college, or buy a home… in the margins its easy to make a nothing more nothing, and you cant protest, or else your racist… there is no program to join, because to make one would have it destroyed instantly… (a home loan program for whites? how dare you! even if they are married to a non white!)
so my son did not get his degree, i never got my college degrees, or a home, or could ever afford to have kids as i had no equity… the courts told me i had no rights when i tried to get parity
but putting that aside… they have to have several sets of rules based on race and economics that would change the outcomes so that the numbers on the reports would reflect this false assumption, or face the punishment for that existing when you use the same rules.
they are doing the same with women in marine and ranger programs… the rules are the same, but women cant pass… so the rules must be racist or gendered favored, so we have to change them.
of course you are not allowed to prove the assumption this is all based on, as to try would be racist, or heteronormative, or gender hate or something
these are the rules that make me a nothing… if you cant get economically past a certain point, they deal you out… so no home, no children, no business and so no home or children, etc.
ergo a nothing waits to die…
and thats how it goes and how i know as i went to the bank to get a loan with my bride, and its been tearing our marraige up because if she married another indonesia, they would have lots of programs and shings as they are not white, but since she married me, she has to be barren.
nice
Maybe this is a good reason to insist on a conservative Republican for the presidential nominee, instead of a moderate. We never seem to get the court stacked in our favor when there’s a moderate Republican in the White House.
Although there seems to be some amount of weaseley deception that goes with the qualifications. If you’ve ever expressed a political opinion, you’re not likely to get the nod from a Republican president. They’re fond of picking the ones who have no record, or having said a single controversial thing. Too bad the Dems are that stupid or shy.
In some ways I think this decision is worse than the Obamacare or same sex marriage ones. Putting low income housing in middle class neighborhoods is absolutely guaranteed to increase crime and violence in neighborhoods that have not known it.
Somebody described it as like cutting up a cancerous tumor and implanting the pieces into healthy tissue.
These despicable racialists are giving the finger to white people. They’re saying, “You white folks thought you could escape the hood by moving to the suburbs? Well, we’re bringing the hood to you.”
And of course, it will also have the effect of watering down reliably Republican districts, and perhaps even turning some of them Democrat. I’m sure that’s strictly an unforeseen consequence. Right?
Anti-discrimination laws need to be drastically overhauled and scaled back. They are an affront to liberty. There is absolutely nothing wrong with people exercising freedom of association with where they choose to live and work.
Oh, and do you think this will be applied to elite rich white liberal enclaves? Fat chance. This is aimed squarely at the middle class, who tend to be more conservative and Republican.
For as much as the Left claims to hate colonialism… they do much of it. They ethnically cleansing white or black neighborhoods. They colonize new territories.
They are a more expansive Empire than anything the US had been since our frontier days. It’s probably a feature of the Left’s fanaticism, rather than a bug.
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.- Remember who said that to us?
All you black ones that escaped the ghettos… you only thought you escaped heh
Ymarsakar Says:
June 26th, 2015 at 8:32 pm
Yep. Great point.
Mark Levin brought up the issue yesterday of the intentional shoveling of thousands of illegal aliens into small, mostly American/white towns around the country, from Utah to Maine to Texas. He mentioned one town in Maine that was overwhelmed: they had a 5% Spanish-speaking population, but now?
39% Hispanic. In FIVE years.
Think about that: that is the deliberate destruction of a defenseless small town. And the same cultural/racial assault is going on all over the country, done by the Marxist scum in power.
The “disparate impact” idea is particularly poisonous: this opens the door to Harrison Bergeron’s world.
“THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains. . . . “
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
Ymarsakar – If I recall, it was Mrs BO. A hideously dishonest woman.
starlord Says:
June 26th, 2015 at 8:44 pm
Yes, and it’s not like Barack and Michelle ever actually lived in a ghetto themselves.
@ Artfldgr,
I got into a discussion recently online about redlining and wanted to make a point, but since my interlocutor was a liberal, I didn’t because his head would’ve exploded:
Income and credit scores are both themselves proxies for the metric that banks care about: DEFAULT RATE.
I wonder if there isn’t a CULTURAL difference between poor whites and poor blacks which makes them default at different rates. Their incomes and credit rating could be identical while there still exists a higher chance of default for one over the other.
That’s the sort of question a liberal won’t ask.
Matt,
At all income levels blacks spend more of their income and save less than whites. That is why black wealth is so small. Spending more and saving less is a recipe for not paying your bills and not being able to pay bills on time. That will kill your credit score and make home loans hard to get without a racial thumb on the scale. It will also lead to defaults. Then the left screams predatory loans. Everyone deserves a house don’t you know.
They exploit people who default. Toxic assets and all that. Chris Dodd, one of the masterminds behind the housing scheme? He’s in charge of the MPAA now, which is in charge of spearheading internet totalitarian taxes.
Not everyone was supposed to know about that, but some people were immune to the fix.
If I recall, it was Mrs BO
Exactly so. I heard her say it on various youtube channels. At the time, people didn’t understand. To me, it was their declaration of war, that they were confirming what I suspected. To the rest of the American “voting” crowd it was… something else. And to Dems, it was also something else too.