A retired mother and daughter who say they were turned away from renting an apartment in Conway three years ago because the management company refused to consider disability payments as income may pursue a Fair Housing Act claim, a federal appeals court said Tuesday.
The three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis reinstated the women's pro-se lawsuit, overturning U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright's dismissal of the suit in December.
In the women's lawsuit filed Sept. 14, 2015, they alleged that an employee of Gene Salter Properties refused to rent them an available two-bedroom, two-bathroom, first-floor unit at the Brentwood Apartments after learning that one of the daughter's sources of income was from Social Security Disability.
The mother and daughter were trying to relocate to Conway from Washington, D.C., and, after an extensive online search, paid a $60 application fee to rent the apartment the daughter found on Dave Ward Drive, according to the lawsuit. The daughter said an employee of the rental company with whom she had been talking then told her that the income verification she provided -- records of disability payments and rental income she received, and records of her 80-year-old mother's Social Security retirement income -- didn't qualify under the company's policy.
The employee said that without a pay stub, a letter of intent or tax returns, the women's income couldn't be verified, and they had to either have a co-signer or pay the full lease term upfront, the daughter, Robyn Edwards, wrote in the lawsuit.
"Needless to say," she wrote, "my mom and I were devastated."
She said they had spent several weeks considering apartments in Conway before deciding on Brentwood, "only to be told it wasn't going to happen, for no reasons other than that I am an individual with a disability." She noted that she had "served honorably in the Army/Guard/Reserve for 22 years" and that her mother had worked all of her life but was now retired.
The lawsuit alleges that Salter Properties insisted that retirement and disability income provided by the Social Security Administration couldn't be verified, and refused to consider other means of verifying their income, resulting in discrimination based on age and disability.
The women "offered to provide proof of these income sources, but [Salter] refused to accept such proof," the appellate panel said in voiding Wright's grant of summary judgment to Salter. Wright said the women couldn't show they were entitled to an exception to the income-verification policy because they didn't argue that the daughter's disability prevented her from getting a co-signer.
"We conclude that plaintiffs have shown that the requested accommodation was necessary and reasonable," said the joint opinion of Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Lavenski Smith of Little Rock, Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Pasco Bowman of Kansas City, Mo., and U.S. Circuit Judge Duane Benton, also of Kansas City.
The Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to "discriminate in the sale or rental, or to otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any ... renter because of a handicap."
The panel said discriminatory conduct prohibited under the act includes the "refusal to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services, when such accommodations may be necessary to afford such person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling."
The appellate judges said Wright properly threw out claims against the employee, Brittany Pringle, who "had only a ministerial role in carrying out Salter Properties' rental policies," and Salter Construction, which had no involvement in the issues at hand.
The ruling allows Edwards and her mother, Mikki Adams, who live in Conway at an address near the Brentwood Apartments, to pursue the claims for which they are seeking monetary damages and an injunction to prevent future discrimination.
Metro on 10/10/2018