The SCOTUS Fair Housing Act Decision a Welcome & Needed Win Following Racial Tragedy

The Huffington Post:

It was in the wake of the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968 that President Lyndon Johnson signed into law a major pillar of U.S. civil rights legislation, the Fair Housing Act.

Nearly 50 years later, it is in the wake of the murders of nine Black worshippers in Charleston, South Carolina at the hands of a reported white supremacist that the Supreme Court recently ruled to uphold it.

The 5-4 decision last week in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project is both a surprising and necessary win on the road toward racial justice.

The Court narrowly decided that the Fair Housing Act (FHA) not only bans overt, intentional forms of discrimination, but also protects people against policies that seem race-neutral but nevertheless produce racially disparate outcomes.

Overt racial discrimination is fairly easy to recognize. Consider the images of and manifestos by Dylann Roof, the confessed killer of the nine Charleston worshippers that have emerged in recent days. However, many forms of discrimination are far more subtle, sometimes unintentional and, thus, much harder to recognize.

Read the whole story: The Huffington Post