Opinion ID: 1946648
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Administrative Burden

Text: It has not been uncommon for landlords who desire not to participate in HCVP, or its predecessor programs, to defend that reluctance on what they regard as onerous or unacceptable conditions attached to the Federal program. Some of the objections raised in earlier cases were recognized by Congress and eliminated from the program. [10] In this case, Glenmont complained about the following six features of the program: Under the HUD-required addendum to the lease (1) the failure of the PHA to pay its portion of the rent does not constitute a breach of the lease, as it would be under the standard lease used by Glenmont, and thus Glenmont would be unable to terminate the tenancy for nonpayment of rent; (2) the tenant is allowed to engage in profit-making activities incidental to the primary use as a residence, which other tenants are not permitted to do; and (3) the addendum prevails over the standard lease terms and cannot be changed by the landlord or tenant. Under the Housing Assistance Payment contract between the PHA and the landlord, (4) the PHA may terminate assistance to the tenant on various grounds, and, if it does so, the lease will automatically terminate without notice to the landlord, and (5) if that contract terminates for any other reason, the lease still terminates without notice to the landlord. Finally, (6) Glenmont complained that participation requires that the apartment satisfy HUD quality standards, which requires an inspection by the PHA. As noted, the hearing examiner, while recognizing that there might be some set of requirements that would be so onerous as to constitute an undue interference with a landlord's property rights, concluded that the features complained of by Glenmont were not unduly burdensome and therefore did not constitute such an interference. He examined each complaint and concluded that some were simply without merit and others did not impose any more substantial burden on landlords than was imposed by existing State and local landlord-tenant law. [11] The case review board, relying on a Connecticut case  Comm'n on Human Rights v. Sullivan Assoc., 250 Conn. 763, 739 A.2d 238 (1999)  concluded that administrative burden was not a proper defense in any event, that [i]f a landlord could avoid the mandate of the County's fair housing law with the defense of `administrative burden,' then landlords could easily thwart the Council's intent underlying the law. Most of the courts that have addressed an administrative burden defense have rejected it. In the Connecticut case, the landlord defended its non-participation on its objection to certain HUD-mandated lease terms. The court treated the issue as one of legislative intent and decided that it should not read into a remedial statute an unstated exception that would undermine the legislature's manifest intent to afford low income families access to the rental housing market. Id. at 781-82, 739 A.2d 238. That does support the case review board's determination that administrative burden is simply not an allowable defense. Other courts have followed the hearing examiner's approach and found that the landlord had not shown any substantial administrative burden and that the landlord's refusal to rent to Section 8 tenants was, in fact, discriminatory under the State or local statute. See Godinez v. Sullivan-Lackey, supra, 352 Ill.App.3d 87, 287 Ill.Dec. 178, 815 N.E.2d 822, 828 (2004). In Franklin Tower One, L.L.C. v. N.M., supra, 157 N.J. 602, 725 A.2d 1104, the New Jersey court was somewhat ambiguous in terms of its approach. The court first noted that the record did not support the landlord's assertion that the Section 8 program requirements were overly burdensome, but then stated that [t]o permit a landlord to decline participation in the Section 8 program in order to avoid the `bureaucracy' of the program would create the risk that `[i]f all landlords . . . did not want to fill out the forms then there would be no Section 8 housing available.' Id. at 1114, quoting in part from Templeton Arms v. Feins, 220 N.J.Super. 1, 531 A.2d 361 (App.Div.1987). In a 1987 decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court construed that State's anti-discrimination law as allowing an administrative burden defense and vacated a summary judgment in favor of the Attorney General because there were issues of fact bearing on that defense. Attorney General v. Brown, supra, 400 Mass. 826, 511 N.E.2d 1103. We are advised by appellant, without contradiction, that, following that decision, the Massachusetts legislature amended the law to disallow that defense. See Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 151B, § 4(10). We do not see any significant practical difference between the analytical approaches taken by the hearing examiner and the case review board with respect to whether administrative burden is a legally allowable defense. The hearing examiner, though engaging in the burden-shifting analysis enunciated in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973), an employment discrimination case, seemingly recognized the legitimacy of an administrative burden defense only to the extent that the requirements would be so onerous as to be considered an undue burden or an interference with an owner's property rights, i.e., a burden substantial enough to constitute either a taking of the property or a violation of due process. Short of that, it would appear from his analysis, which finds support in some of the relevant out-of-State cases, that the kind of administrative burden generally posited by landlords is not a viable defense because it does not reach that Constitutional threshold. On the other hand, although the case review board rejected the kind of administrative burden asserted by Glenmont out of hand, as a matter of legislative intent, there is no indication that it would follow that course if the burden shown by a landlord were to reach Constitutional dimension. In that most unlikely circumstance, the statute could not be enforced in any event. Under either approach, the result is the same: unless the landlord can establish a burden so severe as to constitute a taking of its property or the violation of due process, which, so far as we can determine, no landlord has yet been able to do, administrative burden is not a viable defense. The one important and relevant difference between the hearing examiner's analysis and that of the case review board lies in the hearing examiner's acceptance of Glenmont's objections as a basis for finding the absence of an intent to discriminate against Section 8 prospective tenants, which, in turn, led him to impose only nominal civil penalties. The case review board was correct in rejecting that approach. The general rule in housing discrimination enforcement cases is that intent to discriminate is not required, that it is the effect of the conduct that is relevant, and that a violation of a housing discrimination law may therefore be found without establishing a malevolent intent. See United States v. Pelzer Realty Company, Inc., 484 F.2d 438 (5th Cir.1973); United States v. City of Black Jack, 508 F.2d 1179, 1184-85 (8th Cir.1974) (Effect, and not motivation, is the touchstone); Williams v. Matthews Co., 499 F.2d 819, 826 (8th Cir.1974) (courts will proscribe practices which actually or predictively result in racial discrimination, irrespective of defendant's motivation); United States v. Reece, 457 F.Supp. 43 (D.Mont.1978). Glenmont clearly violated MCC § 27-12 by refusing to rent apartments to otherwise qualified tenants solely because they proposed to use Section 8 vouchers, thereby discriminating against them by reason of source of income. It is irrelevant that Glenmont may have had no personal animus toward those prospective tenants, and it is irrelevant that it participated in other housing assistance programs. The effect of its policy and action was to violate the county law, and the civil penalties imposed by the case review board were therefore permissible. For these reasons, we shall reverse the judgment of the Circuit Court and remand the case with instructions to affirm the final order of the administrative agency. JUDGMENT OF CIRCUIT COURT FOR MONTGOMERY COUNTY REVERSED; CASE REMANDED TO THAT COURT WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO AFFIRM FINAL ORDER OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS; COSTS TO BE PAID BY APPELLEE.