In Weilburg v. Castellane, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of NY ruled in favor of an apartment building owner in a religious discrimination case. The fair housing suit was brought by one of the tenants on the grounds that they were evicted by the landlord for being Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, the court ruled that the building was exempted from the definition of a “dwelling” under the FHA. The exemption applies to buildings of no more than four units, as long as the owner of the building is a resident in one of the units.
The FHA explicitly exempts “rooms or units in dwellings containing living quarters occupied or intended to be occupied by no more than four families living independently of each other, if the owner actually maintains and occupies one of such living quarters as his residence.” In this case, the Defendant owned the building, which was divided into four units. He also lived in one of those units. The other units were occupied by families living independently of one another. For this reason, the property qualified for the exemption.
Successful use of one of the FHA exemptions is rare. This is especially the case since no one may place a discriminatory ad (no ad was placed in this case) and no one in the real estate business is exempt (the Defendant was not in the real estate business).