Court Opinion

ID: 9553433
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:29:37.895027+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:31:05.838936
License: Public Domain

PREGERSON and REINHARDT, Circuit Judges,
dissenting:
We adopt in full Judge Fisher’s dissent to the three-judge panel’s decision, Garcia v. Brockway, 503 F.3d 1092, 1101-11 (9th Cir.2007) (Fisher, Circuit Judge, dissenting), which also appears immediately below, as the dissenting opinion of the en bane minority. We write additionally only to emphasize the extent to which the majority’s holding perverts the purpose and intent of the statute. Indeed, the majority’s decision well illustrates how statutes of limitations have been twisted by courts to limit the scope and thrust of civil rights laws.
The majority takes an Act that was designed to protect disabled persons by mandating that multifamily housing be made accessible to them and construes its statute of limitations in a way that solely benefits the housing construction industry and renders the statute of far less use to disabled individuals than Congress intended. The Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) contains a 30 month grace period that gave developers building new multifamily housing clear notice of what was required to satisfy the statute’s accessibility standards. See 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(C). There is no reason that a developer who fails to comply with these requirements should not be held accountable for such violations. Nevertheless, the majority holds that unless a disabled person happens to become aware of the developer’s failure to comply within two years after the certificate of completion is issued, the developer is home-free— *467completely immune from suit.1 Thus, a disabled person who seeks to acquire an FHA non-compliant unit in a housing development more than two years after the development is certified for occupancy cannot sue the developer even if no person familiar with the needs of disabled persons had previously seen the property and no disabled person had been aware of or injured by the violation until the would-be plaintiff attempted to buy or lease the unit. It seems apparent to us that Congress intended the statute of limitations to have the opposite result: that the disabled person who is injured by the developer’s violation of the FHA should be able to sue that developer if he institutes his action within two years of the injury. It did not intend to invite the developer to assume the risk of non-compliance, in order to save construction costs, by taking the chance that his violation of the law would remain undiscovered by the disabled community for a period of two years.
The purpose of the FHA’s design and construction requirements was to protect an important civil right. It was to help provide disabled individuals equal access to multifamily housing and to eliminate the de facto segregation to which handicap-inaccessible housing gives rise. See H.R.Rep. No. 100-711, at 27-28 (1988), reprinted in 1988 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2173, 2188-89 (“The Committee believes that these basic features of adaptability are essential for equal access and to avoid future de facto exclusion of persons with handicaps, as well as being easy to incorporate in housing design and construction. Compliance with these minimal standards will eliminate many of the barriers which discriminate against persons with disabilities in their attempts to obtain equal housing opportunities.”). The Act, including its statute of limitations provision, is to be construed in a manner that accomplishes this purpose. See Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205, 209, 212, 93 S.Ct. 364, 34 L.Ed.2d 415 (1972) (mandating a “generous construction” of the FHA’s complaint-filing provisions to “give vitality to” the statute’s “broad and inclusive” language); McGary v. City of Portland, 386 F.3d 1259, 1262 (9th Cir.2004). This the majority has not done. Instead, it construes the FHA’s statute of limitations so as to offer the least benefit to disabled persons and the most to developers of multifamily housing. Because we cannot condone a construction so wholly at odds with the purpose of the statute, and the manner in which we are to construe it, we respectfully dissent.

. We recognize that “testers” may also bring FHA design-and-construct claims. We do not believe, however, that the efforts of disability rights organizations, however effective they may be, can somehow make up for the fact that the majority’s construction essentially precludes causes of action brought by the very persons the statute was intended to protect: disabled individuals.