Section 3604

Citation: Section 3604
Parent Document: Gonzalez v. Lee County Housing Authority, 161 F.3d 1290 (1998)
Jurisdiction: United States (federal)
Effective Date: 1998-12-02
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/73387/gonzalez-v-lee-county-housing-authority/ ↗

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    The district court in Baggett considered whether §§ 3604 and 3617,
standing alone, without the benefit of illuminating case law,
sufficiently had established the relevant pre-existing law to permit the
plaintiffs to overcome the defendants’ assertion of qualified immunity,
as contemplated in Lassiter. Baggett. The court explained that, in light
of the statute, “no competent government agent reasonably could believe
that truly egregious acts of discrimination . . . would not violate
federal law,” but concluded that because the plaintiffs’ claims posed a
“sophisticated legal issue” the defendants remained immune.           Id.
Gonzalez’s claims in this case, however, present no such complications.
Gonzalez has alleged and offered evidence that Moran fired her because
Gonzalez refused to discriminate against tenants on the basis of race,
precisely the type of egregious discrimination that the plain language
of the statute warns against and which the Baggett court explained no
competent official could reasonably claim federal law permitted.
Finally, and to avoid confusion, we do not cite Baggett as a case that
clearly establishes the law on this point; our precedent firmly states
that a district court opinion cannot accomplish that result, see Jenkins,
115 F.3d at 826 n.4. We cite the case only as a persuasive illustration
that the provisions at issue here, standing alone, clearly establish the
law in a case alleging conduct so plainly at odds with the statutes.

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