Southwest Fair Housing Council v. Mdwid, 17 F.4th 950 (2021)

Citation: Southwest Fair Housing Council v. Mdwid, 17 F.4th 950 (2021)
Parent Document: Southwest Fair Housing Council v. Mdwid, 17 F.4th 950 (2021)
Jurisdiction: United States (federal)
Effective Date: 2021-11-12
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/5296996/southwest-fair-housing-council-v-mdwid/ ↗

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between an identified neutral policy and any alleged
disparities that adversely affect members of a protected
class. Id. at 542–43. The function of this requirement is to
limit disparate-impact claims only to instances where it is the
defendant’s policy or practice that causes an adverse,
disproportionate effect. Id. at 527 (“If a statistical
discrepancy is caused by factors other than the defendant’s
policy, a plaintiff cannot establish a prima facie case, and
there is no liability.”). In other words, robust causality
requires that plaintiffs prove with a preponderance of the
evidence 7 that the policy itself, and not some other factor
(such as unrelated or uncontrollable societal determinants,
government mandates that limit a defendant’s discretion, or
even other unchallenged policies of the defendant), created
or exacerbated a disproportionate effect. Id. at 542 (The
“robust causality requirement ensures that ‘[r]acial
imbalance . . . does not, without more, establish a prima facie
case of disparate impact’ and thus protects defendants from
being held liable for racial disparities they did not create.”
(alterations in original) (quoting Wards Cove, 490 U.S.
at 653)).     Otherwise, the Supreme Court observed,
defendants may attempt to protect themselves from liability
by “resort[ing] to the use of racial quotas” to engineer
policies that do not result in any statistical disparities, even
if the policy was never the cause of the disparity in the first
place. Id. at 521 (“Courts should avoid interpreting
disparate-impact liability to be so expansive as to inject
racial considerations into every housing decision.”).

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