The Long View on Housing Discrimination in MN and Federal Courts

In the August edition of Bench and Bar magazine, Isaac Manchego, staff attorney at Central Minnesota Legal Services of St. Cloud discusses the practice of redlining —a process intended to control and limit access to credit, housing, and wealth. Federal policy and state-sanctioned lending practices of this nature continued until they were outlawed in 1968 with the Fair Housing Act, even while discriminatory mechanisms continued.

In the article, Manchego examines redlining’s historical roots, the trajectory of federal case law in addressing the discrimination involved, and some of today’s efforts to roll back the legal gains that have been made. Not only a matter of private discrimination, “but a function of how courts and enforcement bodies interpret and apply laws designed to prohibit it,” Manchego highlights the defining cases that have both “discounted statistical and historical evidence” while also providing a “useful tool for identifying discrimination even as its application remains limited and contested.”

He concludes with a look at 21st century redlining in Minnesota and beyond, what the record reveals about recent and concerted federal efforts to scale back anti-redlining enforcement, and why this important legal subject continues to affect how we think, live, and apply the law. Read “The thin red line: A short history of housing discrimination in federal and Minnesota courts” in Bench and Bar.