| Court: | Federal Court, 2nd District |
| Facts: | Starrett City is huge, and it is trying to maintain racial integration, by filling vacant apartments with applicants of the same racial or national origin as the previous tenants. |
| Posture: | US is suing saying this violates fair housing. |
| Issue: | Is this policy constitutional? |
| Holding: | No. |
| Rule: | If it produces a discriminatory effect, it's bad. |
| Reasoning: | You can't refuse to rent or make available any dwelling on the basis of race, color, or national origin. We don't want people being denied a place to live for discriminatory reasons. Racial classifications are presumptively discriminatory, and get strict scrutiny. Temporary ones might be OK for some reasons, but not perpetual ones. Quotas promote integration, but they violate discrimination, e.g. Ceiling quotas are worse than access quotas, because they deny those least represented. |
| Dicta: | Dissent: this upsets one of the most integrated communities we've got. Learned Hand: there is no surer way to misread a document than to read it literally. |