HUD Announces Final Rule Restoring 2013 Discriminatory Effects Standard

On March 17, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it had submitted a Final Rule entitled Restoring HUD's Discriminatory Effects Standard. The Rule reinstates HUD's 2013 discriminatory effects rule and repeals its 2020 rule governing Fair Housing Act (FHA) disparate impact claims. Some of the Department's goals in reinstating the 2013 include:

• Realigning its standard with the central purposes of the Fair Housing Act;
• Removing the additional barriers to housing discrimination suits that the 2020 Rule created; and
• Reinstating a standard consistent with existing jurisprudence on the issue of discrimination in housing.

According to HUD, the 2020 Rule was inconsistent with the spirit of the FHA insofar as the Rule narrowed the scope of the types of suits that could be brought. For example, the 2020 Rule added "new pleading requirements, new proof requirements, and new defenses, all of which made it more difficult to