[JURIST] The Obama administration [official website] on Wednesday announced new rules [fact sheet, PDF] requiring cities and towns to address racial disparities in their housing practices. The new rules, announced at a press conference in Chicago by Secretary Julian Castro [official profile] of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) [official website], aim to bring current housing practices in line with the goals of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (FHA) [text]. The FHA was groundbreaking for giving equal opportunity and access to housing to all Americans, and also for making it illegal to refuse to sell or rent a home to a person based on race, religion, gender or national origin. The new rules will create more transparency between cities’ housing practices and HUD, providing clear guidelines and data to protect people from discrimination. HUD stated [press release]:

[The new rules will] equip communities that receive HUD funding with data and tools to help them meet long-standing fair housing obligations in their use of HUD funds. HUD will also provide additional guidance and technical assistance to facilitate local decision-making on fair housing priorities and goals for affordable housing and community development.

The announcement comes a few weeks after the US Supreme Court [official website] ruling [JURIST report] that Texas’s biggest housing subsidy has been reinforcing segregated housing. The project claimed that even if Texas did not treat minority applicants differently, the subsidy program had the effect of disadvantaging them, under a so-called “disparate impact” theory. The question before the court was whether disparate impact claims could be brought under the FHA. The court found that they could, stating, “The Court holds that disparate-impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act upon considering its results-oriented language, the Court’s interpretation of similar language in Title VII and the ADEA, Congress’ ratification of disparate-impact claims in 1988 against the backdrop of the unanimous view of nine Courts of Appeals, and the statutory purpose.” The decision affirms an earlier ruling [opinion, PDF] by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website].