Q: Your house rules allow you to evict any tenant who unreasonably hasn’t paid rent for more than three consecutive months. You’ve consistently enforced this policy without exception for the past 10 years. Just as you’re making preparations to evict a mobility-impaired tenant who hasn’t paid rent for three consecutive months, he comes to you to request a designated handicap parking spot. Can you evict him?

a.         No, because it would be retaliation for requesting a reasonable accommodation

b.         Yes, if he doesn’t have a reasonable excuse for not paying the rent

c.          Yes, if you can prove that he doesn’t really need the accommodation

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Answer: b

You’re allowed to enforce your rules against tenants after they exercise a fair housing right, as long as it’s for a legitimate, nondiscriminatory purpose and you’ve consistently enforced those rules in the past. Requiring tenants to pay rent is clearly a legitimate and nondiscriminatory purpose, and the property in this case has consistently, for over 10 years, evicted others for violating the policy. As a result, the eviction is justifiable and not a pretext for retaliating against the tenant for requesting an accommodation. So, b. is the right answer.

Wrong answers explained:

a.         The reason a. is wrong is that tenants don’t become untouchable just because they request an accommodation, file a discrimination complaint, or exercise another fair housing right. They still have to obey the property’s legitimate, nondiscriminatory, and consistently enforced rules.

c.          This choice is wrong because exercising a fair housing right triggers the ban on retaliation regardless of whether the exercise was right, wrong, or indifferent, as long as it was undertaken in good faith. In this case, the request for an accommodation precludes retaliatory action even if the requested accommodation isn’t actually reasonable. Similarly, evicting a tenant for filing a fair housing complaint is retaliatory even if the complaint is totally baseless and false.

For more guidance on what constitutes retaliation and how to avoid it, see our February lesson, “Take 8 Steps to Minimize Risks of Retaliation Liability,” available to premium subscribers here.