The Supreme Court has accepted a case in which the relevance of “disparate impact” evidence in discrimination cases brought under the Fair Housing Act is being challenged. The Economic Policy Institute, in collaboration with the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California School of Law, and with the U.C. Berkeley Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society,  has submitted an Amicus Curiae brief to the Court in this case.

Our brief argues that entrenched patterns of residential segregation, established substantially by government policy, structure the housing opportunities of African Americans into the present time. In a case like that considered by the Court, a redevelopment project that displaces African Americans could violate the Fair Housing Act if provision is not made for the relocation of displaced residents into integrated middle-class communities nearby.

Many distinguished scholars have joined us as amici in this brief, including Elizabeth Anderson, John Brittain, Nancy Denton, Christopher Edley, Jr., James Kushner, Ira Katznelson, James Loewen, Myron Orfield, Jr., John Powell, Gregory Squires, and many others.

If you are a scholar in this field, and we neglected to invite you to join these amici, please understand that it was an oversight under serious time-pressure to submit this brief by the Court’s deadline.