Comment by Jenna Raden
This Comment explores the phenomena of clustered municipal incorporations (specifically St. George, Louisiana and the Cityhood movement outside of Atlanta, Georgia) to query whether the Fair Housing Act (FHA) could be used as a tool to prevent the establishment of cities that perpetuate segregation and disproportionately burden minority and low-income communities. As the fringes of America's cities fragment along race and class lines, Congress's twin goals of integration and anti-discrimination under the FHA are subverted, but can the FHA stop it? Courts have not yet addressed segregative municipal incorporations under the FHA, the primary legal tool to prevent further segregation in residential living patterns. The ways in which we are permitted to organize our communities matters. City boundaries have far-reaching and long-lasting effects for populations both included and excluded. Discriminatory municipal incorporations entrench segregation, exacerbate inequality, and create barriers to housing, education, and essential municipal services affecting daily life. This Comment offers a brief background of municipal incorporations in the United States, examines current incorporation movements in the American South, and analyzes a novel challenge to municipal incorporation under the FHA’s segregative effect theory of liability. Given that municipal incorporations have largely evaded discrimination challenges, is municipal incorporation a blank check for government-sanctioned discrimination so long as the invidious motivation is not overt? Will we let discriminatory incorporations continue to unravel the gains society has made since the FHA was enacted? This Comment concludes that state governments and federal agencies are best positioned to realize the goals of the FHA to ensure integrated and non-discriminatory community organization.
About the Author
Jenna Raden: J.D. candidate 2020, Tulane University Law School; B.S. 2008, Northeastern University.
Citation
94 Tul. L. Rev. 365 (2020)