The Ohio House, LLC v. City of Costa Mesa, 135 F.4th 645 (2024)

Citation: The Ohio House, LLC v. City of Costa Mesa, 135 F.4th 645 (2024)
Parent Document: The Ohio House, LLC v. City of Costa Mesa, 135 F.4th 645 (2024)
Jurisdiction: United States (federal)
Effective Date: 2024-12-04
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10287865/the-ohio-house-llc-v-city-of-c... ↗

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advocacy efforts may sue the city with whom it contracts for
retaliating against the provider in response to that
advocacy.” 272 F.3d at 1120. In resolving this issue, we
considered whether the city’s challenged action was taken in
response to, i.e. because of, the plaintiff’s “protected
activity.” Id. at 1128–30. Specifically, we considered the
temporal proximity between the plaintiff’s “protected
activity” and the city’s actions and explained that the
plaintiff “demonstrated the requisite causal link” partly
because the city engaged in retaliatory action “two weeks
after” it found out about plaintiff’s protected activity. Id. at
1130. The plaintiff therefore established a prima facie case
of retaliation under § 3617. Id. Finally, we concluded that
even though the city “met its burden of articulating a
nonretaliatory reason for its actions,” the plaintiff presented
sufficient evidence to establish a triable issue regarding its
“ultimate burden of demonstrating that the reason was
merely a pretext for a discriminatory motive.” Id. at 1128,
1130–31.
    As we explained in Walker, a claim based on retaliation
“is analogous to the more-familiar situation of a retaliatory
failure-to-hire in the Title VII and First Amendment
contexts.” Id. at 1126 (first citing Ruggles v. Cal.
Polytechnic State Univ., 797 F.2d 782, 786 (9th Cir. 1986)
(Title VII retaliation claim); and then citing Mt. Healthy City
Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 283–84
(1977) (First Amendment retaliation claim)). And, as with
Title VII retaliatory action claims, an FHA retaliation claim
hinges on the plaintiff’s actions that preceded the
defendant’s actions. See Wetzel v. Glen St. Andrew Living
Community, LLC, 901 F.3d 856, 868 (7th Cir. 2018) (“Like
all anti-retaliation provisions, [§ 3617, when invoked to
pursue an FHA retaliation claim] provides protections not
          THE OHIO HOUSE, LLC V. CITY OF COSTA MESA           39

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