District Court allows county’s FHA claims to proceed

Courts Fair Housing Act Mortgages Fair Lending Foreclosure Disparate Impact

On June 1, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied a national bank’s motion to dismiss claims that its allegedly discriminatory mortgage lending practices violated the Fair Housing Act. According to a complaint filed by the County of Cook in Illinois (County), the increase in foreclosures during the relevant time period were proximately caused by the bank’s mortgage practices, and caused the County to incur financial injury, including foreclosure-related and judicial proceeding costs and municipal expenses due to an increase in vacant properties. The bank filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that that the County did not have standing to sue because “the judicial proceedings and other activities associated with the additional foreclosures” actually “yielded a net benefit to the County.” The court disagreed, ruling that all the County had to do was show a reasonable argument that the bank’s lending practices resulted in foreclosures. The bank “does not dispute that the County has properly alleged in its complaint a financial injury sufficient, at least at the pleading stage, to support standing,” the court wrote.