New Article: Alan M. White, Bank of America v. City of Miami: Standing and Causation Under the Fair Housing Act, 51 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 413 (2018). Part I of Introduction below:
Progress towards racial equality in America has been a long journey, of many steps forward and many steps backward. The crisis of 2007-2008 was a large step backwards in the struggle for economic equality, in which the homeownership gains of African-Americans during the 1980s and 1990s were submerged in a historic wave of foreclosures and home losses. In Bank of America v. City of Miami, the Supreme Court confronted two vital questions of responsibility under the equality norms of the 1968 Fair Housing Act: 1) whose actions are responsible for the persistent residential segregation and inequality (causation), and 2) who are the victims of housing segregation who may hold the responsible parties to account (standing)? The Court’s compromise decision allowing the case to proceed was a step forward on the standing issue and a step backwards on causation. The majority opinion reflected its continuing ambivalence towards recognizing racial segregation as a systemic and intractable feature of our society, both accepting and denying the broad and shared responsibility for causing this structural inequality and for breaking it down.
Poverty Law 