Virginia attorney general Jay Jones is being sued over a Virginia law that bans landlords from discriminating against people who use federal housing vouchers to pay their rent. Landlords often don’t like accepting those vouchers, because landlords that accept vouchers have to waive their Fourth Amendment privacy rights against warrantless inspections, and deal with burdensome government red tape.
Requiring landlords to accept Section 8 vouchers is unconstitutional. A state appeals court in New York has reluctantly struck down a similar law in New York state, finding it violates the Fourth Amendment. The New York Times reports:
A New York State appeals court on Thursday invalidated a key protection for low-income tenants, ruling that a state law that bars landlords from discriminating against people who use federal housing vouchers to pay rent is unconstitutional.
The unanimous ruling, by a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division’s Third Judicial Department, acknowledged that the goal of the law was “laudable”…But the court sided with the landlord who had appealed the case, asserting that requiring him to accept vouchers under the federal program commonly known as Section 8 violated his constitutional rights.
The landlord, Jason Fane of Ithaca, N.Y., had argued that, under the voucher program, he would have had to allow housing officials to inspect his properties without a warrant, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
“We are constrained to conclude that the law is unconstitutional on its face,” the judges wrote….federal vouchers help more than 245,000 [New York] households pay rent….Renters with a Section 8 voucher spend up to 40 percent of their income on rent, with federal funds covering the rest…landlords have complained that the paperwork and inspections required to participate in Section 8 can be onerous.
A lawyer for Mr. Fane [said] the judges “correctly concluded” that the state cannot coerce landlords into “waiving privacy rights.” He said that the Section 8 program was meant to be voluntary.
A similar legal challenge is pending in Virginia. In January, “The Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute filed suit on behalf of a 9-unit apartment management company and its owner June Wheatley challenging Virginia’s Fair Housing Law, which unlawfully forces landlords to submit to warrantless inspections of their property, records, and electronic devices.” The lawsuit, known as Lucinda LC v. Jones, is pending in federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia. This month, the plaintiff’s lawyers at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute moved to certify the case as a class action lawsuit, and asked the court for a preliminary injunction against Virginia’s law barring landlords from discriminating against renters using Section 8 vouchers.
