Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman
455 U.S. 363 (1982)
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Rule of Law:
Under the Fair Housing Act, standing to sue extends to the full limits of Article III, granting standing to a 'tester' who receives false information about housing availability, an organization whose activities are perceptibly impaired by discriminatory practices, and individuals who can plead and prove that racial steering in a specific, compact area has deprived them of the benefits of interracial association.
Facts:
- Havens Realty Corp. (Havens) owned and operated two apartment complexes in Henrico County, Virginia, a suburb of Richmond.
- Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME), a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring equal housing opportunities, employed individuals as 'testers' to investigate potential housing discrimination.
- Sylvia Coleman, a Black tester, and R. Kent Willis, a white tester, both made inquiries at Havens' properties in March 1978.
- On three separate occasions, Havens' employees informed Coleman that no apartments were available, while on the same dates they informed Willis that vacancies existed.
- In July 1978, Coleman again inquired and was told no apartments were available, while a different white tester was told the opposite on the same day.
- Also in July 1978, Paul Coles, a Black man genuinely seeking housing, inquired about an apartment at a predominantly white Havens complex and was falsely told nothing was available.
- Coleman and Willis, residents of the Richmond metropolitan area, alleged that Havens' practices deprived them of the benefits of living in an integrated community.
- HOME alleged that Havens' steering practices frustrated its counseling and referral services and caused a significant drain on its resources.
Procedural Posture:
- Paul Coles, Sylvia Coleman, R. Kent Willis, and Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) filed a class action lawsuit against Havens Realty Corp. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
- On a motion from Havens Realty, the District Court dismissed the claims of Coleman, Willis, and HOME, finding they lacked standing and their claims were barred by the 180-day statute of limitations.
- The District Court did not dismiss the claims of Paul Coles, the bona fide renter, which proceeded.
- Coleman, Willis, and HOME, as appellants, appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
- The Court of Appeals reversed the District Court, holding that the appellants had standing and that their claims were timely under a 'continuing violation' theory.
- Havens Realty Corp., as petitioner, was granted a writ of certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Issue:
Do individuals and an organization have standing to sue under the Fair Housing Act for injuries allegedly caused by racial steering practices, where the individual plaintiffs include a 'tester' who was provided false information, another tester who was not, and individuals claiming harm to a broad metropolitan area, and where the organization claims its mission was frustrated and its resources drained?
Opinions:
Majority - Justice Brennan
Yes. Standing under the Fair Housing Act extends to testers who are victims of misrepresentation, organizations whose missions are concretely impaired, and individuals who can show steering practices harmed their specific neighborhood. The court reasoned that Congress intended standing under the Fair Housing Act to be as broad as permitted by Article III's 'injury-in-fact' requirement. For testers, § 804(d) of the Act creates a statutory right to truthful housing information; a tester who is lied to (like Coleman) suffers a direct injury to this right, regardless of their intent to rent. A tester who is not lied to (like Willis) suffers no such injury and lacks tester standing. For organizations like HOME, a 'concrete and demonstrable injury to the organization's activities—with the consequent drain on the organization's resources'—is a sufficient injury-in-fact for standing. For 'neighborhood' standing, while loss of interracial association is a palpable injury, plaintiffs like Coleman and Willis must, on remand, plead with more specificity that Havens' practices had an appreciable effect on their particular, 'relatively compact neighborhood,' not just the entire metropolitan area.
Concurring - Justice Powell
Yes. Although the plaintiffs' pleadings are problematically vague, the majority's legal conclusions are correct. The core constitutional requirement for standing remains a 'distinct and palpable injury.' The plaintiffs' allegation that they lived somewhere within a 269-square-mile metropolitan area is nearly meaningless and fails to show how discrimination at two apartment complexes could have caused them palpable harm. This case is a 'textbook case' of the high price of liberal pleading rules, which imposes a severe burden on the courts and threatens to trivialize the constitutional requirement of standing. While the plaintiffs should be given an opportunity to amend their complaint to be more specific, courts and counsel should act earlier to prevent cases with such vague jurisdictional allegations from proceeding so far through the litigation process.
Analysis:
This decision significantly broadened the enforcement power of the Fair Housing Act. By validating 'tester' standing, the Court legitimized a critical tool used by civil rights organizations to uncover and challenge covert housing discrimination, establishing that a violation of a statutory right is itself a cognizable injury. The ruling on organizational standing empowers these groups to sue in their own right when discriminatory practices concretely harm their operational capacity, rather than just on behalf of their members. However, the Court also placed a practical limitation on 'neighborhood' standing, requiring a demonstrable causal link between the discrimination and a plaintiff's specific residential area, thus preventing generalized claims of harm across vast metropolitan regions.
