Jones v. Faribault, City of

Background

The City of Faribault implemented a rental licensing ordinance that included a Crime-Free Multi-Housing program and rental-unit occupancy restrictions. The plaintiffs—current and former Faribault renters and Somali Community Resettlement Services, Inc.—challenged the ordinance under the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and the Minnesota Equal Protection Clause.

The plaintiffs alleged that the ordinance’s criminal screening policy could disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic renters because of racial disparities in criminal-justice-system contact. They also alleged that the occupancy restriction could disproportionately affect Black Somali renters because Somali families are larger than white families, according to the plaintiffs’ position.

The plaintiffs disclosed demographers Dr. Wildeman and Dr. Parnell. Wildeman analyzed racial disparities in incarceration data, and Parnell used those estimates and other demographic information to analyze the potential effect of criminal-history screening and occupancy restrictions. The City disclosed Dr. Kennedy, a forensic criminologist, and Dr. Steward, an economist and statistician, to address crime-free housing programs and the plaintiffs’ statistical methods.

Legal standard

Under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, expert testimony must be useful to the factfinder, offered by a qualified witness, and reliable. The court has a gatekeeping responsibility—meaning it must screen proposed expert testimony for relevance and reliability. Under the principles commonly associated with Daubert, the court may consider such matters as whether a method can be tested, whether it has undergone peer review, its potential error rate, and whether it is generally accepted. The inquiry is flexible and depends on the type of expertise involved.

The court explained that doubts about an expert’s usefulness generally favor admission. Testimony should be excluded at this stage only when it is so fundamentally unsupported that it cannot assist the jury. Problems with an expert’s factual basis, methodology, or conclusions ordinarily may be explored through cross-examination and competing evidence. Rule 403 separately permits exclusion when the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion, misleading the jury, delay, or cumulative evidence substantially outweighs the testimony’s usefulness.

City’s motion to exclude the plaintiffs’ experts

The City argued that Wildeman and Parnell relied on general population statistics, used unreliable methods, and made an incorrect assumption that the ordinance prohibited landlords from renting to people with criminal histories. The court rejected those arguments at the expert-admissibility stage.

The court found that Parnell’s assumption was consistent with the plaintiffs’ position on the merits and therefore did not, by itself, make his testimony unreliable. It also found that testimony about racial disparities in the criminal-justice system could help the jury understand the ordinance’s context and the potential for a discriminatory effect.

The City argued that the plaintiffs’ experts should have used actual data comparing people affected by the policy with people who were not affected. The court held that the plaintiffs were not required to offer the best possible expert testimony at this stage. Because there was no actual data for all rental applicants compared with accepted and rejected applicants, the court found the proposed proxy-based testimony useful and admissible. The court emphasized that allowing the testimony did not change the plaintiffs’ ultimate burden to prove an actual or predictable discriminatory effect caused by the ordinance.

The court therefore denied the City’s motion to exclude the plaintiffs’ expert testimony.

Plaintiffs’ motion to exclude the City’s experts

The plaintiffs argued that Kennedy’s opinions were based on a model crime-free housing program different from Faribault’s program, included improper legal conclusions, and could mislead or confuse the jury. The court found Kennedy’s testimony about the purpose, reputation, use, and effects of crime-free housing programs relevant and helpful. It also found that differences between the model program and Faribault’s program could be addressed through cross-examination.

The court declined to exclude Kennedy’s opinion that the ordinance did not explicitly prohibit landlords from renting to people with criminal records. The court treated that issue as a factual matter concerning the ordinance’s wording, rather than an improper legal conclusion. It also declined to exclude the testimony under Rule 403 at that time.

The plaintiffs also argued that Steward was not qualified to rebut a Fair Housing Act disparate-impact analysis because he lacked experience with housing cases and overcrowding issues. The court found that Steward’s proposed testimony focused on statistical methods, datasets, and the distinction between correlation and causation. It concluded that this work did not require specialized knowledge of housing or the Fair Housing Act beyond Steward’s qualifications as an economist and statistician and his prior experience analyzing disparate impact in other contexts.

The court acknowledged that Steward’s lack of housing-case experience might make his testimony weaker, but held that it did not make the testimony fundamentally unsupported. The court also found that the City could challenge whether the plaintiffs had shown an actual, documented effect through data or statistical analysis. Any legal instruction about the Fair Housing Act’s standards and burden of proof would remain the court’s responsibility at trial.

Disposition

Judge John R. Tunheim ordered that the plaintiffs’ motion to exclude expert testimony, Docket No. 143, was DENIED, and the City’s motion to exclude expert testimony, Docket No. 152, was DENIED. The order addressed the admissibility of proposed expert testimony and did not decide the underlying claims challenging Faribault’s rental ordinance.