Fair Housing Justice Center, Inc. v. JDS Development LLC
- Analisa Torres
- 1:19-cv-01171
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
Fair Housing Justice Center v. JDS Development: Judge Torres denied PMG’s request to reconsider an FHA time-limit ruling.
Property Markets Group, Inc.’s reconsideration motion was denied, leaving in place the court’s earlier refusal to dismiss the Fair Housing Justice Center’s FHA disability-discrimination claims on statute-of-limitations grounds.
What happened
In Fair Housing Justice Center, Inc. v. JDS Development LLC, Property Markets Group, Inc. asked the court to reconsider an earlier decision refusing to dismiss the Fair Housing Justice Center’s disability-discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act because of the filing deadline.
PMG argued that the deadline began when an inaccessible building was designed or built, because that was when the organization’s mission was allegedly harmed. The court had instead ruled that the deadline began when people protected by the Fair Housing Act encountered the allegedly unlawful building features, including when the organization’s testers visited the building.
Judge Analisa Torres denied PMG’s reconsideration motion. She found that PMG repeated an argument the court had already considered and identified no controlling authority or other reason showing that the earlier ruling was clearly wrong or unjust.
The detailed version
- Fair Housing Justice Center, Inc. v. JDS Development LLC · No. 1:19-cv-01171
- Analisa Torres
- Aug. 25, 2020
Background
The court had previously denied a motion by Property Markets Group, Inc. (PMG) to dismiss the Fair Housing Justice Center, Inc.’s disability-discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act (FHA) on statute-of-limitations grounds. A statute of limitations is a deadline for bringing a claim. PMG then moved for reconsideration of that earlier order.
Legal standard
The court explained that reconsideration is an extraordinary remedy governed by Rule 59 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Local Civil Rule 6.3. It may be granted to correct a clear legal error or prevent manifest injustice. The party seeking reconsideration must identify controlling decisions or factual matters that the court overlooked. A reconsideration motion may not be used to present new arguments, relitigate issues, or obtain a second hearing on the merits.
Analysis
In the earlier order, the court held that the FHA’s limitations period for design-or-construction claims under 42 U.S.C. § 3613(a)(1)(A) begins when a person protected by the FHA encounters the allegedly unlawful building elements and is subjected to discrimination. PMG did not ask the court to reconsider that general holding.
Instead, PMG argued that the holding should not apply in the same way to the Fair Housing Justice Center because it is an advocacy organization. PMG contended that the organization’s injury was frustration of its mission and that this injury occurred when the allegedly inaccessible building was designed or constructed, even if the organization did not yet know about it. PMG argued that the limitations period should therefore begin when the organization knew or should have known that the building had been constructed.
The court rejected the argument because PMG had already made the same argument in its earlier reply brief. The court had previously concluded that the time when the organization’s mission became frustrated was different from the event that started the FHA limitations period. According to the court, no relevant “aggrieved person” was subjected to a discriminatory housing practice until the testers visited the building.
The court also found that PMG had not identified controlling case law that the court overlooked or shown that the earlier decision caused manifest injustice. The other discrimination-law cases cited by PMG did not provide a reason to change the court’s conclusion about when an FHA injury occurs.
Disposition
The court denied PMG’s motion for reconsideration and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motion at ECF No. 147.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.