Can you produce a single court case in the US where a prospective landlord told a prospective tenant “We don’t rent to people who sued their landlords” and lost a case because of it?
Deciding not to rent to someone who has sued a landlord is like deciding not to hire someone who has sued an employer or deciding not to date someone who sued a former lover. It’s not “taking action against” them. It’s refusing to enter into a voluntary association with them.
And in this country you can generally refuse to do business with someone for any reason you like as long as it’s not their membership in a protected class.
Cite? Did this ever happen to anyone, or are you just imagining that’s how this would go?
It’s likely eviction-worthy to lie on your rental application. It’s possible that it’s also criminal fraud? Telling material lies to get someone to do business with you that they wouldn’t have done had they known the truth sounds like fraud to me. Not sure.
I’ve seen rental applications that wanted references for the past decade of living circumstances. They could call your old landlords and ask? I suppose you could fake contact information for all those too.
This is the legal history of it. The reason special laws were enacted for cases of racial, sex, etc discrimination is the default assumption that you can enter into a business association, such as renting somebody something, or not, with whoever you want to for whatever reason you want to. There is no obligation to accept a business arrangement with the first person who meets your basic economic terms.
Racially, etc discriminatory restaurant owners, landlords etc therefore had this defense but at a certain point society decided there was an overriding public interest to carve out race, sex, etc as unacceptable reasons. Otherwise there would always have been some set of recognized unacceptable reasons, or a history of court precedent where judges decided what were good reasons or not. In fact again the history is as you say that you don’t need a reason to refuse to initiate business with somebody, nor is it legally necessary to conceal your reason if you do have one, except those specific carve outs.
Obviously as a practical matter a landlord isn’t going to admit the reason if it’s expected litigiousness. Some people, as just demonstrated, believe they have legal cases about all kinds of stuff where they don’t really, but it’s still a hassle to be frivolously sued.
Landlord here, have never done deep background checks (besides stuff like credit score) on tenants. In reality we usually have one person or group at a time which accepts the stated rent, and no gtee of another coming fwd before the place goes empty a(nother) month. If there were two simultaneous candidates and one was known to be a lawyer, OK sorry lawyer.
This might surprise you, but discrimination is legal in the United States except for about a half dozen reasons and only in business activities … “Republicans need not apply” … also surprising is that the judge’s opinion is all but meaningless in court, they have to follow the law (and/or precedence) just like the rest of us … and I’ve had judges say they’d like to do such-and-such for me but the law doesn’t allow it …
I’m sorry … unless there’s a law that specifically forbids restaurants from not serving people who sue restaurants … it does fly … discrimination is lawful except for a few reasons …
Mind you … discrimination of all types is bad for business … refusing to bake gay wedding cakes will cost you money …
Not only can lying on your rental application get it refused tenancy, it can get you evicted after the fact if the truthful information would have gotten you refused in the first place … I find out after I rented to someone they weren’t homeless that year but ripped off a landlord for $2,500 … I’m evicting lest the tenant rips me off for that kind of money …
I said “may” have consequences … big apartment complexes and rental management companies typically do a professional job, and winning a civil case says nothing about you, and everything about who you sued … tenant wins against a landlord, that’s a shit-hole landlord …
There are screening services … for $75 you can get judicial records for all 50 states, Canada and some will pull up Mexican records … and the tenant pays for this through screening fees …
First you’ll need to find a state where this is outlawed … that was my correction above … I thought Oregon was one of those states but I can’t find the law that says so …
Keep in mind 90% of my business was with townies with local rental references … call up all the landlords listed and get the positive results, check employment and off to the court house to check records there … then down to land records to verify these landlord names and OOPS, different name … one more call to get the real rental reference and refuse the application … I’m sure the friend will always give a good reference, but it’s still a material falsehood on the application …
There’s an important point that gets lost in all the weeds … a surprising number of state legislators are landlords … I collect rent on the 1st of the month, pay bills on the 2nd … that leaves me one hell of a lot of free time to either go nag my own legislator or just simply get elected myself … doctors have to doctor, lawyers have to lawyer, real estate agents have to real estate agent … landlord get 28 days paid vacation time every month …
Landlords write the laws … not just rental laws, all the laws …
Just a few hundreds years ago, landlords were also given all powers of the judiciary over the common class … late with rent, it’s off with your head …
Sounds like you’re a landlord in a functioning housing market.
Where I live the rental vacancy rate often hovers around 1%, and it’s not uncommon to get 50+ applicants for a single property. That lets landlords pick and choose.
