{"id":666929,"date":"2026-03-19T13:50:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/666929\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T13:50:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:50:25","slug":"court-ruling-on-law-prohibiting-income-discrimination-against-prospective-tenants-could-shut-many-low-income-new-yorkers-out-of-housing-advocates-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/666929\/","title":{"rendered":"Court ruling on law prohibiting income discrimination against prospective tenants could shut many low-income New Yorkers out of housing, advocates say"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"Screenshot\"\t\t\t<\/p>\n

An upstate court ruled a state law that required landlords to accept Secion 8 housing vouchers. <\/p>\n

Photo by Susan De Vries<\/p>\n

An appeals court has struck down<\/a> a state law prohibiting landlords from discriminating against tenants who use government assistance to pay rent, finding that the requirements might infringe on landlords\u2019 civil rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In its ruling earlier this month, a panel from the Albany-based Appellate Division, Third Department found that,\u00a0 even though \u201csource-of-income discrimination is often a proxy for discrimination against other protected classes,\u201d like race, it was left with no choice other than to rule against it because it forced landlords to consent to warrantless safety inspections and searches of their properties, which are required under the federal Section 8 housing voucher program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenged statute reflects a deliberate \u2014 and laudable \u2014 legislative effort to address those interrelated concerns,\u201d the judges wrote. \u201cNonetheless, as a consequence of this law, landlords are now forced to consent to governmental searches of their rental properties and records. Given that \u2026 the source-of-income discrimination law violates landlords\u2019 Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unlawful searches, we are constrained to conclude that the law is unconstitutional on its face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curtis Johnson, an attorney representing upstate landlord Commons West, LLC in the case, said he and his client were pleased with the decision and that he believed the ruling was necessary to protect landlords\u2019 privacy rights.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But tenant advocates say they fear the Third Department\u2019s ruling might embolden landlords to not rent to the roughly quarter million New Yorkers who receive federal assistance through Section 8 vouchers.<\/p>\n

Evan Henley, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, said he believed the decision was \u201cfundamentally wrong,\u201d not only because he believed it would create additional hardship for Section 8 voucher recipients, but because the legal theory the court relied on is flawed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA facial constitutional challenge requires the court to rule the law is unconstitutional in every conceivable application,\u201d Henley said. \u201cWhen you read the decision, they actually apply kind of an opposite presumption, and say that the state did not show that this law was constitutional everywhere. That\u2019s the opposite of what they should have done. Actually, the landlord needed to have shown that it was unconstitutional everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Third Department panel reasoned that, because it may be possible a situation arises where a landlord is subjected to a warrantless search of their properties and records they don\u2019t consent to by being forced to accept Section 8 vouchers \u2014 and therefore the conditions of the program requiring inspection \u2014 the law essentially subjected landlords to unconstitutional searches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, Henley said those Fourth Amendment privacy concerns are overblown \u2014 landlords aren\u2019t subject to incredibly invasive property searches they don\u2019t consent to in reality. He called the case \u201cfounded in speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just not how things generally play out in practice,\u201d Henley said. \u201cThe landlord did not prove that there ever has been one instance where a landlord has ever been penalized under the New York State Human Rights Law, or under the Section 8 program, or point to an inspection where there was no opportunity for pre-compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henley said he hoped New York Attorney General Letitia James\u2019 office<\/a>, which initially sued the upstate landlord for refusing to accept Section 8 housing vouchers, would be appealing the decision, adding that he believed the state\u2019s Court of Appeals would reverse it and uphold the law.<\/p>\n

When asked whether she would be appealing the decision, James\u2019 office said it was reviewing the matter.\n<\/p>\n

Even if James\u2019 office chooses not to appeal, housing advocates said they\u2019d likely look for ways to modify the state law or pass a slightly different one that would circumvent the Constitutional concerns raised by the appellate court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite the court\u2019s decision, the state law is technically still in effect and income discrimination is still illegal in New York, Henley and Anna Luft, the associate director of housing policy at New York Legal Assistance Group, emphasized. But, because the decision impacts the law\u2019s enforcement, it will make landlords more likely to ignore it, they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile this decision impacts the enforcement of source of income discrimination claims under the New York State Human Rights Law, [the law] is still in effect and source of income discrimination is prohibited under it,\u201d Luft said. \u201cI expect that this ruling will likely embolden some landlords in New York City to discriminate against voucher holders.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An upstate court ruled a state law that required landlords to accept Secion 8 housing vouchers. Photo by…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":666930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,281,7065,282014,3228,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,71478,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-666929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-housing","11":"tag-income-discrimination","12":"tag-law","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-section-8","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116256167127728214","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}