And that, according to a housing advocacy group and the American Civil Liberties Union, is illegal.

Last month, Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia (HOME) filed a federal lawsuit against Sterling Glen alleging that its blanket policy on criminal records is racially discriminatory because it has a disproportionate effect on African Americans.

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African Americans are overrepresented in the nation’s prison system, with blacks making up about 13 percent of the population but about 32 percent of those incarcerated. So even as Sterling Glen’s policy is the same for everyone who applies for a lease, the effect is not.

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“Policies can be nondiscriminatory on their face but still have radically different outcomes. The beauty of disparate impact is that it says, ‘You know what? Your intent does not matter. What matters is what happens,’ ” said Heather M. Crislip, who is HOME’s president and chief executive.

Advocates said Sterling Glen could still achieve its purpose of carefully vetting tenants, including their criminal records, through more nuanced individual appraisals.

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But critics say that the legal approach taken by HOME and the ACLU, though increasingly common, stands fairness on its head: It opens companies to legal challenges not because of their unequal treatment of people but because a business practice produces an unequal effect on certain classes of people.

“A policy like [Sterling Glen’s] is not discrimination simply because you end up with a racial disproportion,” said Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a think tank that opposes affirmative action in the college admissions process. “Just about any policy you can think of is going to have some kind of a demographic disproportionate impact on some group.”

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The ACLU’s lawsuit, for example, doesn’t allege that Sterling Glen has few minority tenants, only that its no-felon policy has a disparate impact on black people who live in the area because the demographic group is more likely to have criminal records.

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Forcing a business to alter policy because of its disparate impact alone can create unintended consequences, Clegg said. He said if landlords are required to delve into the background of every tenant, their costs — and perhaps rents — might rise. To avoid being sued, he said, a business might start making decisions based on race.

“This is not a fair way to enforce civil rights laws,” he said.

Multiple telephone calls seeking comment from Wisely Properties, which owns Sterling Glen, and Clayton R. Wisely, who is listed in public records as the firm’s owner, were not returned. Multifamily Management Services, which was also listed as a defendant, declined to respond, too.

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Sterling Glen, which was built in 1999, has 300 apartments on nearly 25 acres, with rents ranging from $910 to $1,450 for one-, two- or three-bedroom units, according to ApartmentFinder.com. One-time administrative and application fees total $225. The property is assessed at $35.1 million, Chesterfield County tax records say.

Crime is low. In the past year, Chesterfield police were summoned to the complex 71 times to investigate relatively minor events, including disturbances (12), domestic disputes (eight), larceny from an auto (one), vandalism (two) and suspicious situations (five), according to the agency’s records. There were, however, four suicides.

Some Sterling Glen residents expressed alarm about the civil rights lawsuit, wondering whether the controversy could damage its reputation or affect rents. Some supported the legal action, while others said the lawsuit seemed misguided.

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“I had no idea — I’m super shocked, actually,” Sarah Poling said. “This is a nice establishment. I wouldn’t want anybody with a felony or anything like that to live in my apartment complex.”

But Poling, 28, who is white and lives in the complex with her daughter, also suggested that banning people with lesser offenses might be going too far.

Chanel Bea, an African American who wasn’t aware of the policy when she moved in recently, said the blanket prohibition on felons and others seems to her like a roundabout form of discrimination.

“This is a really covert way of excluding families or just individuals from renting,” said Bea, 45. “Blacks have historically been given harsher charges and been convicted more often than their white counterparts and even their Latino counterparts.”

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HOME’s complaint, filed June 4, says Sterling Glen’s policy of automatically excluding anyone with a criminal record is overly broad and in violation of the Fair Housing Act.

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“Our focus is that a categorical ban that bars individuals with a prior [criminal] record is racially discriminatory, illegal and unconstitutional,” said Jennifer Safstrom, an attorney for the ACLU of Virginia.

Besides barring people with felony records, the policy disqualifies anyone with criminal records involving illegal drugs, prostitution or cruelty to animals — some of which are misdemeanors, not felonies. Sterling Glen also excludes people whose adjudications were withheld or deferred — legal classifications generally used for defendants who can avoid conviction by completing certain court-ordered requirements. Advocates also point out that, until last year, Virginia’s threshold for felony theft was $200. (It’s now $500.)

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The upshot is that an elderly person with a drug conviction decades ago is treated like someone with a recent violent conviction, the advocates said. Given the number of black people who have criminal records compared with white people in Chesterfield County, the apartment complex’ ban is three times more likely to trip up a black resident than a white person, the lawsuit says.

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“We have found that persons who have a criminal background, even if it’s old or was a minor offense, have nearly impossible odds to find decent affordable housing,” Crislip said. “When landlords won’t take a nuanced approach to making those decisions, and have blanket policies, it really can just prevent anyone from successfully entering society.”

The Supreme Court, in a case involving a Texas housing agency, upheld the use of disparate-impact claims under the Fair Housing Act four years ago. In recent years, similar analyses have led to challenges in contexts beyond employment and housing against several policies that appear race-neutral but have a disproportionate impact on minorities, such as public school discipline, fare evasion, pizza delivery and the NCAA’s ban on allowing former felons to coach.

Critics have urged the Supreme Court to revisit the framework of the legal theory as its application spreads, such as in a recent case with a Fairfax County mobile home park. Waples Mobile Home Park required all residents to submit proof of legal residence in the United States, saying it was necessary to conduct background and criminal checks, minimize losses from evictions, and comply with federal law that makes it illegal to shelter undocumented immigrants.

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A group of Latino residents filed suit, arguing that the policy had a disparate impact on Latinos. The mobile home park — which said 60 percent of its tenants were Latinos — won in district court but lost on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Last month, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

At Sterling Glen, resident Bill Coada said he sees the issue over criminal background checks from both sides.

“I’ve worked in places where I have employed people with felony records, and most of them are normal people just like everybody else,” said Coada, 50. “And I’ve worked with people that don’t have felonies and they’ve been just as bad as the people who have been to prison.”

Coada, who manages a Wawa convenience store, said the apartment complex has provided a safe and quiet home for him and his family, including three children. He said it also appears to be diverse: There are three Latino families in his building, along with an interracial couple. Several employees, including two black people and a person of Filipino descent, also live there. But he said it’s not easy to say whether the complex’s policy on criminal records is a reasonable standard to impose or a disguised way of discriminating against people.

“I don’t want someone with a violent criminal background living across the hall,” Coada said. “But then again, people have to have a place to live.”