A federal judge in Maryland has ruled that a home appraiser can sue two black professors who accused him of discrimination, and they can sue him for discrimination for the way he valued their home for a refinance.
The ruling came in an early stage of the professors’ lawsuit, where the parties do not have to conclusively prove the other side violated the law to keep suing. At this early stage of the litigation, motions to dismiss the other side’s lawsuit can be brought, but such motions can only be granted if the other side’s allegations are implausible on their face. As the Supreme Court has explained in Ashcroft v. Iqbal,
The judge ruled on August 3 that both sides had shown that their allegations were plausible enough to continue.
Johns Hopkins University professors Nathan Connolly and Shani Mott, a married couple, accused white appraiser Shane Lanham of valuing their home less because they are black. They sued Lanham for allegedly violating state and federal civil rights, fair-housing and fair-lending laws.
In response, Lanham filed a counterclaim against Connolly and Mott, alleging defamation based on media interviews the pair gave.
Mott and Connolly focus on racism and discrimination in their academic writings. Mott teaches Africana studies while Connolly’s research attacks racism and capitalism. The New York Times has described Connolly as an “expert on redlining and the legacy of white supremacy in American cities.”
Lanham’s counterclaim explained how his accusers’ claims of discrimination flunked basic principles of social science research.
“Dr. Connolly and Dr. Mott’s ill-conceived ‘experiment’ involving different appraisers, a seven-month gap, and intervening changes in market conditions would not withstand even basic scrutiny in the serious academic environment in which they work,” Lanham’s counterclaim explained. Both professors should have known their “experiment” was seriously “flawed in so many respects that a first-year undergraduate would immediately recognize.”
For example, the professors “failed to disclose the sale of the similar house next door to their home that sold only a month after Mr. Lanham and 20/20 Valuations’ appraisal for $7,000 less than the amount of the appraisal.”
The professors’ claim of discrimination was based on an “experiment” they conducted months after the Lanham’s valuation, in which they removed any signs of a black family living there and had a separate company value the property.
The judge ruled the professors’ claim was plausible enough to avoid being dismissed at an early phase of the lawsuit (the motion-to-dismiss phase). But their “experiment” does seem to fall short of demonstrating discrimination, containing flaws as serious as a study that was excluded from evidence in EEOC v. Freeman (2015), and ignoring relevant variables in a way at odds with Smith v. Virginia Commonwealth University (1996), which ruled that studies alleging discrimination need to take into account the major variables to be considered potential proof of discrimination. These two rulings — EEOC v. Freeman (2015) and Smith v. Virginia Commonwealth University (1996) — are binding precedent in the lawsuit between the Motts and Lanham, because they were issued by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over federal lawsuits in Maryland.
The federal government has taken an interest in the case, filing a “statement of interest” in support of Mott and Connolly’s about the reach of the Fair Housing Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The government notes that it does not take a position on whether Lanham violated those laws, it is only intervening to advocate that those laws be given an expansive scope.
