1968 Fair Housing Act: Protected Classes, Discrimination, and Exemptions

The Fair Housing Act protects seven classes from discrimination in housing: race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, and disability.¹ These protections apply to nearly every housing transaction in the country, from renting an apartment to buying a home to applying for a mortgage, and they bind landlords, sellers, real estate agents, lenders, insurers, and appraisers alike.

The Seven Protected Classes

The original 1968 law, passed as Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 in the weeks after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, prohibited discrimination on four grounds: race, color, religion, and national origin.¹ Congress added sex in 1974.² The Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 added the final two, familial status and disability.³

Race, color, religion, and national origin cover what the words suggest, and they apply whether the discrimination is aimed at a specific group or takes the form of neutral-sounding rules that fall harder on one group than another. Sex covers discrimination against men or women in any housing transaction.

Familial Status

Familial status protects households where one or more children under 18 live with a parent, legal guardian, or someone designated by the parent. It also covers pregnant women and people in the process of gaining custody of a child.⁴ In practical terms, a landlord cannot refuse to rent to you because you have kids, charge families a higher deposit, or restrict children to certain floors or buildings. Qualifying senior housing is the main exception.

Disability

Disability means a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. The definition also reaches people with a history of such an impairment and people who are perceived as having one, whether or not they actually do. Current illegal drug use is explicitly excluded.⁴

Housing providers must allow reasonable accommodations (changes in rules or policies) and reasonable modifications (physical changes to the property) when a person with a disability needs them for equal use and enjoyment of a home.⁵ Assistance animals are one of the most common accommodations. The Fair Housing Act’s definition covers any animal that works, performs tasks, or provides emotional support tied to a disability, which is broader than the ADA’s trained-dog definition. No-pet policies, pet deposits, and pet fees do not apply to assistance animals.⁶

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Sexual orientation and gender identity do not appear in the text of the law. In 2021, HUD announced that it interprets the statutory ban on sex discrimination to include discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, following the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Bostock v. Clayton County. Under that interpretation, HUD accepts and investigates complaints on those grounds and requires state and local agencies that receive HUD funding to do the same.⁷

What Discrimination Looks Like

The law reaches well beyond a landlord flatly saying no. It makes it illegal to refuse to negotiate, set different terms, or deny housing to anyone because of a protected characteristic.⁵ Charging one applicant a higher deposit, applying stricter screening criteria to some renters, or offering fewer amenities to certain tenants all count.

Steering is when a real estate agent guides you toward or away from particular neighborhoods based on a protected trait. Only showing you listings in certain areas, or discouraging you from looking in a neighborhood where you would be a demographic minority, violates the law even when the agent thinks they are being helpful.

Blockbusting is the tactic of pushing homeowners to sell quickly and cheaply by suggesting that people of a particular race, religion, or background are moving in and property values will fall. The statute specifically bars anyone from using fear about demographic change to profit from housing transactions.⁵

Telling someone a unit is unavailable when it is actually on the market, because of that person’s protected class, is also illegal. This kind of false representation is harder to catch than an outright refusal, which is why fair housing organizations run paired tests with matched applicants.

Lending and Redlining

The protections extend to mortgage lenders, insurers, and appraisers. A lender cannot deny a loan, impose worse terms, or charge a higher rate because of your race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin.⁸ Redlining, the practice of refusing to lend or offering worse terms in whole neighborhoods based on the racial or ethnic composition of residents, is prohibited even when individual applicants in that area would qualify.

Where the Protections Don’t Reach

A few narrow exemptions cut into the law’s reach. Even where an exemption applies, discriminatory advertising is never allowed.

The “Mrs. Murphy” exemption covers owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units. If you live in one unit of a fourplex, you have more discretion in choosing the other tenants.⁹ Buildings with five or more units are never covered by this exemption, even if the owner lives on site.

An owner who sells or rents a single-family home without using a broker or agent may qualify for an exemption, but only if the owner holds no more than three single-family homes at a time. For a sale where the owner does not live in the home, the exemption applies to only one transaction within any 24-month period. Any involvement by a professional broker or agent ends the exemption.⁹

Religious organizations may limit noncommercial housing they own or operate to members of their own religion, as long as membership in the religion is not restricted by race, color, or national origin. Private clubs that provide lodging to members as a side function of their main purpose may limit noncommercial housing to those members.¹⁰

The familial status protections do not apply to housing that qualifies as “housing for older persons.” Three categories qualify: housing operated under a federal or state program designed for elderly residents, housing intended for and solely occupied by people 62 and older, and housing intended for people 55 and older where at least 80 percent of occupied units have at least one resident who is 55 or older and the community publishes and follows policies confirming that intent.¹⁰ This is the legal basis for legitimate 55+ and 62+ communities to restrict occupancy by age.

One caution on all of the exemptions above: none of them permit discriminatory advertising. A landlord who has a valid Mrs. Murphy exemption still breaks the law by posting a listing that says “no children” or “Christians only.”⁵ This is probably the most misunderstood piece of the exemption rules.

If You Believe You Were Discriminated Against

You have two separate paths, and you can use one or both. A HUD complaint must be filed within one year of the discriminatory act.¹¹ A private lawsuit in federal or state court must be filed within two years, and any time spent on a pending HUD proceeding does not count against that window.¹² Many people start with HUD because it costs nothing and does not require a lawyer, then decide whether to sue based on how the investigation unfolds.

You can file a HUD complaint online, by calling 1-800-669-9777, or by mailing a completed form to the nearest regional Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.¹³ Include the name and address of the person or organization you believe discriminated against you, the address of the property, and a dated description of what happened. Save emails, text messages, voicemails, screenshots of listings, and notes from conversations. Witness names and contact information make a complaint stronger.

Courts can order actual damages, punitive damages, injunctive relief requiring the discriminatory conduct to stop, and attorney’s fees for the prevailing party.¹² HUD administrative proceedings can result in civil penalties paid to the government and orders requiring the housing provider to compensate the victim directly.¹⁴

1
United States Department of Justice. The Fair Housing Act
2
Congress.gov. The Fair Housing Act (FHA): A Legal Overview
3
U.S. Government Publishing Office. 42 U.S.C. – The Public Health and Welfare – Chapter 45 – Fair Housing
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 3602 – Definitions
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 3604 – Discrimination in the Sale or Rental of Housing
6
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Assistance Animals
7
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD to Enforce Fair Housing Act to Prohibit Discrimination on the Basis of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 3605 – Discrimination in Residential Real Estate-Related Transactions
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 3603 – Effective Dates of Certain Prohibitions
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 3607 – Religious Organization, Private Club, or Housing for Older Persons Exemption
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 3610 – Administrative Enforcement; Preliminary Matters
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 3613 – Enforcement by Private Persons
13
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD-903 Report Housing Discrimination
14
eCFR. 24 CFR 180.671 – Assessing Civil Penalties for Fair Housing Act Violations