Fair Housing & Owner Rights

What federal law actually covers

The protected classes under federal law are race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, and disability (the statute's own term is "handicap," and it is defined broadly enough to reach chronic illness, mental health conditions, and cognitive disabilities, not only mobility impairments). A board asked about a class outside this list, sexual orientation, source of income, marital status, is being asked a state or local law question, not a federal one.

"To discriminate against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling... because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin"

Source: Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601-3619, Cornell Legal Information Institute

Most states and many cities add protected classes federal law does not cover, and can add stricter procedures too. Confirm your state and local fair housing law, and your state's HOA statute, before treating federal law as the whole picture.

The chain of authority

Federal law is the floor. The Fair Housing Act and its regulations at 24 CFR Part 100 set the minimum every association must meet, and no declaration, bylaw, or rule can lawfully waive it. State and local fair housing law sits above that floor and can impose stricter rules, never weaker ones. HUD and DOJ guidance, the joint statements and technical assistance documents that explain how the statute applies in practice, is useful for reasoning through a scenario, but it is not itself binding law and can be withdrawn without notice: HUD pulled two of its most detailed pieces of assistance-animal guidance in 2025. Only after all three comes an association's own declaration, bylaws, and rules, which must yield wherever they conflict with what sits above them.

Keep that order in mind on every lesson in this course. A CC&R restriction that predates fair housing law, or was never updated, does not survive contact with it.

Where boards get burned

A handful of beliefs cause most of the trouble. The first is that a board can demand medical records to prove a disability is real.

"In most cases, an individual's medical records or detailed information about the nature of a person's disability is not necessary."

Source: Joint Statement of HUD and DOJ, "Reasonable Accommodations Under the Fair Housing Act", HUD and U.S. Department of Justice

The second is applying the ADA's narrower service-animal test, a dog individually trained to perform a specific task, to a private, residents-only community. That is usually the wrong law: the Fair Housing Act's assistance-animal rule is broader and reaches any animal a resident needs, of any species, trained or not. The third is assuming that offering an alternative closes the file; a resident does not have to accept a substitute they reasonably believe will not meet their needs. And the fourth is assuming a granted request ends the risk: enforcing rules more harshly against someone after they file a request or a complaint can be its own violation, separate from how the original request was handled.