Opinion ID: 1388511
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Congress Has Recognized the Necessity of Effective Administrative Remedies for Housing Discrimination

Text: An administrative tribunal's ability to compensate discrimination victims with meaningful damage awards is crucial to eliminating discrimination in housing. This is demonstrated by the history of FEHA's federal counterpart, the Fair Housing Act, and by the congressional findings supporting recent amendments of that legislation. The federal Fair Housing Act is similar in both purpose and content to FEHA. [3] Like FEHA, the federal law depends on private enforcement to achieve its policy goals. (See Private Enforcement and Fair Housing, supra, 6 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 375, 378.) The United States Supreme Court has observed that complaints by private persons are the primary method of obtaining compliance with the [Fair Housing] Act. ( Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins., supra, 409 U.S. 205, 209 [34 L.Ed.2d 415, 419].) When the victims of housing discrimination enforce the fair housing laws, they act not only on their own behalf but also `as private attorneys general in vindicating a policy that Congress considered to be of the highest priority.' ( Id. at p. 211 [34 L.Ed.2d at p. 420].) Private enforcement of the federal Fair Housing Act has been frustrated, however, by the difficulty of pursuing court actions. As one commentator notes: [T]he prospect of hiring a lawyer and filing a lawsuit is not appealing to many people, and this problem is especially acute in the housing field. The very fact that an individual or a family is in the market for new housing often means that their lives are in a state of flux, which frequently makes bringing a civil lawsuit a practical impossibility. ( Private Enforcement and Fair Housing, supra, 6 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. at p. 380.) Other commentators agree that allowing victims of housing discrimination to bring court actions cannot alone eradicate discriminatory housing practices. ( Discrimination in California Housing, supra, 50 Cal.L.Rev. 635, 642, fn. 42 [Given the expenses emanating from a lengthy trial, the doubt as to the outcome, immediate need for housing, and the difficulty in calculating damages, many victims of [housing] discrimination may not (or cannot) initiate court action.].) Compared to a court action, an administrative proceeding is simple to initiate. There are no complex procedural requirements that would require the complainant to seek out and retain private counsel. And administrative proceedings usually produce decisions and remedies more quickly than judicial proceedings. For administrative proceedings to be truly effective, however, they must offer meaningful compensation to the claimant. The federal experience shows that the single most important component of an effective fair housing program is the administrative agency's enforcement authority. If that authority is weak, the statutory scheme will not succeed. As originally enacted, the federal Fair Housing Act offered no effective administrative redress of private claims because the powers of HUD, the administrative agency charged with enforcing the federal law, were limited to informal methods of conference, conciliation, and persuasion. (Former 42 U.S.C. § 3610(a); Pub.L. No. 90-284 (Apr. 11, 1968) tit. VIII, § 810, 82 Stat. 85.) A victim of housing discrimination could obtain equitable relief and money damages only by prevailing in a civil lawsuit. The limitation on HUD's enforcement authority was widely criticized because, as noted above, discrimination victims pursue the alternate route of prosecuting a court action too infrequently to make private tort actions an effective method of combating housing discrimination. (See, e.g., Kushner, An Unfinished Agenda: The Federal Fair Housing Enforcement Effort (1988) 6 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 348, 354; Private Enforcement and Fair Housing, supra, 6 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 375, 380.) Congress acknowledged the validity of these criticisms in 1988. It found that discrimination and segregation in housing remained pervasive 20 years after the federal law was enacted, noting HUD's estimate that 2 million instances of housing discrimination occur each year. (House Rep. of the Judiciary Com. (hereafter House Report), 1988 U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News, at p. 2176.) Based on this experience, Congress determined that the principal defect in the existing law, which prevented it from achieving the goal of eradicating discrimination in housing, was the absence of an effective administrative enforcement mechanism ( ibid. ), and that an administrative proceeding should be the primary method by which persons aggrieved by discriminatory housing practices obtain redress ( id. at p. 2200). For the express purpose of providing effective administrative remedies, Congress passed the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988. (42 U.S.C. § 3612; House Rep., supra, 1988 U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News, at pp. 2173-2175.) These amendments added aggressive administrative enforcement capabilities to the fair housing provisions of the federal act. They provide for agency enforcement of private claims before an administrative law judge, who is empowered, upon a finding of housing discrimination, to award appropriate relief including compensatory damages, [4] injunctive relief, other equitable relief, and civil penalties of a maximum of $10,000 for a first violation and up to $50,000 for two or more violations within a seven-year period. (42 U.S.C. § 3612(b), (g); House Rep., supra, 1988 U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News, at p. 2198.) The amendments thus reflect the considered judgment of Congress that effective administrative remedies, including the ability to impose damages and penalties in addition to equitable relief, are vital to the elimination of housing discrimination.