Rita, a single mother, was desperate to find an affordable home in Palm Beach County, Florida, after suffering a foreclosure a few years earlier. After searching for some time, she finally found an apartment within her price range but there was one huge problem: Soon after she moved in, the property manager began to sexually harass her.
 
He took advantage of Rita’s financial circumstances — and his position of power over her — to extort sexual acts from her in exchange for reduced rent. The harassment escalated, as he tracked her whereabouts, monitored her guests, and installed surveillance cameras facing her home. After Rita refused to continue with the “quid pro quo” arrangement, the property manager retaliated. He served her with fraudulent violation and eviction notices, filed an eviction action against her even though she owed no rent, and asked the police to arrest her for trespassing. 

Rita filed a lawsuit against the property manager, arguing that his harassment of her and retaliatory acts once she rejected his sexual behavior violated the federal Fair Housing Act, which protects people from discrimination based on sex, including sexual harassment. In a shocking decision, the trial court dismissed her case at the earliest stage, concluding that even if she could prove all of her allegations, the property manager’s conduct would not qualify as either harassment or retaliation. 

Yesterday, the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, along with the National Fair Housing Alliance, National Women’s Law Center, Relman Colfax PLLC, and other groups, filed an amicus brief in support of Rita’s appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The brief lays out the consistent case law that shows sexual harassment in housing violates civil rights guarantees. It also underscores the inherent power imbalance between a housing provider and a tenant, arguing that an owner or property manager violates the Fair Housing Act when he conditions a tenant’s rental payment on her submission to sexual acts as well as when he retaliates against her when she refuses.

Unfortunately, Rita’s experience is far from anomalous. Sexual harassment in housing remains a widespread and insidious issue for women and LGBTQ tenants across the country. And the COVID-19 pandemic has only made tenants more vulnerable to harassment and abuse by landlords and property managers who abuse tenants’ financial insecurity and shelter-in-place orders.

Sexual harassment in the home in uniquely violative and threatening, as the home is supposed to be one’s place of refuge. Victims of sexual harassment have reported severe and often immobilizing emotional and physiological consequences, including shame, depression, sleeplessness, headaches, and anxiety. In many cases, individuals are forced to move out of their homes to escape the abuse. But such displacement is expensive and often results in financial hardship due to steep moving costs, loss of security deposits, and even job loss.

Critically, women of color are especially vulnerable to sexual harassment and its lasting consequences due to the intersecting experiences of racism and sexism. The testimony of Black women, Indigenous women, and other women of color often reveals that they have been sexually harassed or targeted precisely because of their race and stereotypes about women of color.

Moreover, the harmful impact of sexual harassment is magnified for women and gender-nonconforming tenants who hold other marginalized identities. Women with disabilities, for example, face higher rates of sexual harassment and violence than those without disabilities. Transgender women and other LGBTQ-plus tenants also experience significant barriers to housing access due to harassment and abuse based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Yet despite the devastating consequences of discrimination on tenants, landlords lag far behind employers and schools in ensuring that they and their staff are held accountable when they perpetrate sexual harassment, or when they know of harassment committed by other tenants. Courts should hold landlords accountable when they fail to address harassment, including sexual harassment, committed by tenants — just as employers are responsible for responding to sexual harassment at the workplace, and schools are responsible for responding to complaints by students. We recently filed an amicus brief in Francis v. Kings Manor Park — a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit — arguing that a housing provider should be held liable under the Fair Housing Act for refusing to respond to discriminatory tenant-on-tenant harassment.

Enforcing the Fair Housing Act’s protections against sexual harassment — whether by landlords, property managers, or other tenants — is a crucial step. It has been established time and again that this nation’s civil rights statutes broadly protect against sexual harassment in every major facet of one’s life. The courts must apply the Fair Housing Act’s protections to ensure equal housing opportunity for women and all marginalized communities.

Linda Morris, Skadden Fellow, ACLU Women’s Rights Project,
& Sandra Park, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Women's Rights Project

Election Day is fast approaching, and while we’re doing everything we can to prepare, some questions remain unanswered.

Dale Ho, director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, and University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman join the At the Polls podcast this week to discuss litigation across the country that could impact who gets to vote and how.

At the Polls: Will Litigation Decide the 2020 Election?

At the Polls: Will Litigation Decide the 2020 Election?

Ahead of this year’s election, we have seen an unprecedented amount of election litigation between both political parties. The Republican National Committee, at the direction of President Trump, has amassed a $20 million war chest for voting right...

Ahead of this year’s election, we have seen an unprecedented amount of election litigation between both political parties. The Republican National Committee, at the direction of President Trump, has amassed a $20 million war chest for voting right...

Listen to this episode

Election years are always busy for the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, but this year is even more action-packed due to the pandemic. For many, the safest way to vote is to vote by mail, yet millions of eligible voters nationwide cannot access the ballot due to state restrictions on who is allowed to cast an absentee ballot. Other requirements, such as those mandating witness signatures and ballot notarization, do not allow for CDC-recommended social distancing.

The ACLU has filed 25 lawsuits in 19 states and Puerto Rico to expand access to vote by mail and to challenge unnecessary witness, notary, and voter ID requirements. In the latest episode of At the Polls, we take a closer look at how litigation after the election could end up in the Supreme Court, and what we can all do now to avoid that scenario.

Listen now and subscribe to stay up to date on election news.

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Transgender people like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Laverne Cox and Janet Mock have been at the forefront of the fight for liberation in the LGBTQ community since the Stonewall riots in 1969. Yet trans folks, and particularly trans people of color, face and experience a higher rate of violence and death than other groups within the LGBTQ community. The names of the mostly Black and brown trans people who have died, and some killed, over the last few years continues to grow.

Happy 75th Birthday Marsha ‘Pay It No Mind’ Johnson. Co-founder of Gay Liberation Front, Co-founder of S.T.A.R. and ACT UP member. Black Trans HIV+ Sex Worker Lives Matter today and everyday. We honor you. pic.twitter.com/cyqf4bnoG2

— ACT UP NY (@actupny) August 24, 2020

We know the names of trans people of color who were recent victims of deadly violence and we say their names: In Florida: Yaz'min Shancez, Bee Love Slater, Tony McDade, and the many in Jacksonville. Across America: Roxsana Hernandez, Muhlaysia Booker, Nina Pop, and Aerrion Burnett. Dozens of trans and nonbinary people across America whose lives were cut short since 2019. We should all be alarmed by these high rates of violence and harassment.

The number of the recently reported violent deaths of trans people of color in America is compounded by issues of inadequate access to healthcare for these especially marginalized Black and brown people, exacerbated by an inability for many to find stable work and housing, even after the landmark June Supreme Court decision explicitly outlawing workforce discrimination against LGBTQ people.

Trans people are our family members, friends, and neighbors. We all must ensure they can live their lives openly and without fear of discrimination.

Legislators returning to the Florida State Capitol for the 2021 session must use their power to make our communities and our state safer for transgender and all LGBTQ people to live by supporting the Florida Competitive Workforce Act. The ACLU of Florida has backed the bill in consecutive legislative sessions, following its introduction in 2009.

The Florida Competitive Workforce Act would explicitly expand the workplace protections of the June 2020 SCOTUS decision to include antidiscrimination protections for access to housing and public accommodations.

More than 40 years after Dade County Commissioner Ruth Shack shepherded passage of a comprehensive human rights ordinance for Greater Miami that became a model for communities across America, it is long past due that those protections be applied statewide. All Floridians deserve to live free from fear of discrimination at home and in public. It is long past due that Florida lawmakers make this a reality for all Floridians.