An Urgent Post-Election Message: Relman Colfax's Call to Continue Defending Civil Rights Through Action and Allyship

Dear Allies in Justice,

The post-election atmosphere is undeniably charged with uncertainty. At Relman Colfax, we recognize the profound concerns that accompany another Trump administration and its potential impact on civil rights. From fair housing and employment discrimination to immigration policy, economic justice, police misconduct and protest rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and affirmative programs, the stakes are higher than ever.

We want to assure you that we are not only monitoring these developments closely but are also preparing strategies rooted in our decades of experience and successes under similarly challenging administrations. Our legacy of resilience and fighting discrimination through litigation ensures that we remain steadfast in our mission to protect and advance justice, equity, and dignity for all.

This special edition newsletter features insights from our Partners on key civil rights areas we are tracking and how we plan to tackle the challenges ahead based on our roadmap of litigation and counseling experience. As we brace for what’s to come, we invite you to reach out for support, collaboration, or to learn more about our shared mission. Together, we can weather the storm and continue making meaningful progress.

Reflecting on the Previous Trump Administration to Prepare for the Future with Reed Colfax and Michael Allen

A second Trump Administration will almost certainly resume its first-term agenda of rolling back protections against housing discrimination and reducing or eliminating housing subsidies administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”).?

Among other things, we anticipate early and sustained efforts to weaken regulations concerning disparate impact and the obligation of states and cities to affirmatively further fair housing (“AFFH”). We can expect the White House will direct HUD and the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to refrain from vigorous enforcement of the Fair Housing Act and related laws to the extent they focus on racial inequity, LGBTQ+ rights or the effects of predatory practices. Finally, the Trump Administration is likely to tighten eligibility for HUD subsidies in a fashion that will disproportionately harm households with non-citizens.

As it was during Trump’s first term, Relman Colfax is prepared to challenge these efforts. In 2017, when HUD Secretary Ben Carson tried to suspend a program that would dramatically enhance the purchasing power of a Housing Choice Voucher–and allow low-income families to move into high-opportunity areas–the Firm won a federal court injunction in Open Communities Alliance v. Carson, preserving the program and permitting its dramatic expansion during the Biden Administration. In 2020, the Firm challenged HUD’s attempt to rewrite regulations in a way that made it impossible to bring disparate impact claims; National Fair Housing Alliance v. Carson was one of several litigation efforts that preserved this important means of challenging housing discrimination. While not ultimately successful, the Firm’s work in National Fair Housing Alliance v. HUD focused advocates’ attention on the harmful effects of weakening HUD’s AFFH regulation (which required state and local governments to take affirmative steps to reduce segregation).

Given its deep expertise in housing discrimination matters, Relman Colfax is uniquely positioned to assist individuals and communities who may be harmed by the incoming administration’s regressive policy positions and its retreat from vigorous enforcement of the Fair Housing Act and related laws.?

Reed Colfax practices primarily in civil rights litigation. He maintains a varied trial court practice that includes challenges to discrimination in housing, public accommodations, and employment throughout the United States. Michael Allen’s civil rights litigation practice focuses on the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and related civil rights laws, with an emphasis on dismantling barriers to integration on the basis of disability and of race. If you have any questions, comments or thoughts to share with Reed or Michael on this issue, please reach out.

Addressing Immigration and Civil Rights Concerns with Yiyang Wu

Donald Trump has built his platform on a harsh and harmful anti-immigration stance, exemplified by his infamous Muslim Ban and his dogged efforts to "build a wall"—both a physical barrier and a metaphor for encouraging division within our society. In Trump’s first term, the administration enacted 472 executive actions on immigration. The civil rights community was called to action, over and over, to file challenges against his overtly discriminatory efforts. Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign for the 2024 election promises an even harsher approach. He and his running mate’s rhetoric has created an environment of fear for all immigrants, whether they are documented, undocumented, seeking asylum, or part of mixed-status families.

Relman Colfax’s steadfast commitment to defending the civil rights of immigrant communities is nothing new. In Trump’s first year in office, Relman Colfax co-counseled with prominent civil rights organizations to bring a landmark Fair Housing Act lawsuit against the City of LaGrange, Georgia. The case addressed policies that required Social Security numbers for access to utility services, effectively excluding many immigrants from housing opportunities. The resulting settlement repealed the discriminatory policies and provided damages for those impacted. Similarly, in 2022, Relman Colfax filed an amicus brief in Reyes v. Waples Mobile Home Park, supporting Latino families forced from their homes under a policy requiring proof of immigration status. The case resulted in a successful reversal from the Fourth Circuit. These efforts illustrate Relman Colfax’s unwavering dedication to ensuring housing equity and dismantling policies that perpetuate systemic discrimination.

This year, we filed a Fair Housing Act lawsuit against the State of Florida for a law that limits the ability of people from China and six other targeted countries to purchase homes in the state. In passing SB 264, state politicians made references to baseless, dangerous stereotypes and invoked xenophobic sentiments eerily similar to those that paved the way to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. They have refused to exempt even some lawful immigrants from their limitations on property purchase: the people targeted by this discriminatory law include many people legally living full time in the United States on nonimmigrant visas who have no ties to foreign governments other than the fact that they were born in a particular country. Similarly draconian laws are being considered in over a dozen states, including Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, and we have no doubt that these and other efforts will be lauded by the Trump administration. We continue to monitor these laws, and we are prepared to hold accountable those who enact them.

Donald Trump’s proposed policies threaten to further marginalize immigrant communities and institutionalize discrimination. Relman Colfax has been closely monitoring these developments, recognizing the urgent need for legal advocacy to protect the rights of immigrants and mixed-status families when it comes to their rights for housing and employment.

Yiyang Wu’s civil rights practice focuses on housing discrimination, lending discrimination, and police accountability. If you have any questions, comments or thoughts to share with Yiyang on this issue, please reach out.

Advancing Economic Justice with Stephen Hayes

We can expect that the Trump administration will gut fair lending and economic justice initiatives, just as it did in its first iteration. A regulatory vacuum will mean some lenders will divest from underserved communities and it will open the door for predatory practices.?We’ve seen this cycle before: federal neglect for consumer protection paved the way for the predatory practices that led to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Monumental consumer protection legislation, the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), and robust fair lending enforcement curbed those practices. The prior Trump administration reversed those efforts by disempowering the CFPB and DOJ fair lending activities.?

Relman Colfax has consistently fought to ensure lenders are providing all communities access to safe and responsible credit, particularly when the federal government has abdicated its responsibilities. We’re a leader in representing cities and other entities in redlining lawsuits, including actions combating redlining minority neighborhoods in Indianapolis and Providence. We filed groundbreaking “reverse redlining” lawsuits, including securing a major jury verdict against New York-based Emigrant Savings Bank and Emigrant Mortgage Company for discriminatory mortgage lending. We also pioneered predatory lending lawsuits against for-profit schools like RSHT and recently Walden University, and we represented plaintiffs challenging discriminatory rent-to-own schemes, paving the way for government actions premised on similar theories.?

In addition to continuing our enforcement work, we fought the Trump Administration’s efforts to roll back legal protections. We filed a lawsuit challenging a Trump-era HUD rule that would have eviscerated the “disparate-impact” standard under the Fair Housing Act, and we represent organizations in amicus briefs defending fair lending and fair access tools like the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Community Reinvestment Act and the CFPB’s 1071 Small Business data collection Rule.

Relman Colfax will continue to protect these rights, bringing fair lending challenges, defending strong fair lending laws, and working with institutions intent on designing and protecting battle-ready fair lending compliance programs that will ensure they continue to meet their obligations to fairly serve all communities.

Stephen Hayes practices in both the civil rights counseling and litigation groups, with an emphasis on fair lending and fair housing, consumer protection, regulatory compliance, and financial technology issues. If you have any questions, comments or thoughts to share with Stephen on this issue, please reach out.

Safeguarding Protest Rights and Combating Police Misconduct with Rebecca Livengood

While no one knows exactly what the next four years will bring, we do know that the First Amendment is a critical tool for combating abuses of power, and it is often the primary tool available to those experiencing these abuses firsthand. For decades, people from around the country have come to Washington, D.C. to participate in the essential democratic activity of protest. Last time Trump was in office, he used police to deploy gas on protestors, dispersing them so he could take a picture of himself holding a Bible. The threat of similar and more grave abuses against protestors is real, at a moment when the ability to protest is most needed.

Relman Colfax is committed to ensuring that protestors are allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights free from law enforcement retaliation and brutality. We are currently litigating a case against the Metropolitan Police Department for their treatment of protestors in the summer of 2020. This work is part of our broader commitment to challenging discriminatory policing, including a suit involving the wrongful detention of a Black Secret Service agent by the United States Park Police, which we successfully tried and have since successfully defended on appeal.

Together, we are dedicated to ensuring a society where people do not have to choose between their safety and their First Amendment rights, where the nation’s capital can be a landscape rich with public debate, and where people do not fear discriminatory or retaliatory violence from police.?

Rebecca Livengood’s civil rights litigation practice focuses on challenging racial discrimination in housing, provision of public services, and policing. If you have any questions, comments or thoughts to share with Rebecca on this issue, please reach out.?

Fighting for LGBTQ+ Rights with Glenn Schlactus

Where Donald Trump stands on LGBTQ+ issues is no secret. His first administration opposed efforts to outlaw anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination as a form of sex discrimination. He banned transgender Americans from serving in the military. This year he made hostility toward people who are transgender a central part of his campaign.

?I have no doubt that Trump’s new administration will try to diminish the rights of LGBTQ+ people in many ways, just as he did his first time in office. Where President Biden reversed discriminatory Trump policies, Trump will reverse the reversals. Trump will try to prevent any extension of the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock decision recognizing that discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity constitutes unlawful sex discrimination. He will facilitate state and local discrimination, such as by providing support for schools that discriminate against transgender children and attacking ones that instead offer all their students dignity, respect, and support. He wants to punish doctors who provide gender transition care. The list, unfortunately, could go on.

We at Relman Colfax are motivated, not daunted. We will fight in the courts to protect the Constitutional and statutory rights of LGBTQ+ Americans, just as we have before. In 2017, we obtained the first federal appellate court decision holding that Title IX requires public schools to permit transgender students to use restrooms corresponding to their gender identities. We continue to oppose school districts resisting that ruling, in court and in administrative proceedings. We prevented Wisconsin from denying gender affirming care to Medicaid beneficiaries in 2019. The Firm enforced fair housing rights in Missouri to ensure that same-sex couples can live in housing of their choice, and have likewise done so on behalf of people being harassed by their neighbors because of their sexual orientation.

We will take on the attacks, new and revived, that the Trump administration brings against LGBTQ+ rights and people. We have been fighting discrimination on all fronts for a quarter century, and will continue to do so in pursuit of a more just society for all people regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

Glenn Schlactus practices in the Firm’s civil rights litigation and civil rights counseling groups. He handles a broad variety of matters, with a focus on lending and housing. If you have any questions, comments or thoughts to share with Glenn on this issue, please reach out.

Promoting Equity and Access with Stephen Hayes and Reed Colfax

Disparities in access to housing, credit, employment, and educational opportunities are persistent. For example, the Black-white gap in homeownership rates was the same in 2020 as it was in 1970, just two years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. Addressing those disparities requires thoughtful and focused initiatives, like Special Purpose Credit Programs (“SPCPs”) designed to increase access to safe credit for underserved communities. Over the last several years, Relman Colfax counseled financial institutions on the development of a historic number of such programs. These programs contributed to an astounding result: mortgage rate disparities for Black and Hispanic borrowers fell sharply in 2022 and 2023. We learned over the last few years that when we focus on real solutions, we can reverse the seemingly chronic trend of mortgage disparities.?

Those significant gains are under threat. Conservative activists have engaged in a pattern of intimidating private companies and nonprofits with the goal of reversing the historic strides that have been made addressing persistent disparities.??

Relman Colfax has been at the forefront helping entities thoughtfully and effectively advance racial equity. In addition to paving the way on advancing SPCPs through an influential legal white paper and contributing to an industry-facing toolkit, the Firm is the leading adviser to companies and nonprofits on developing a historic number of SPCPs and other affordable housing and small business lending initiatives. We are also a leader in helping financial institutions ensure their algorithmic models are not discriminatory, including by serving as the fair lending monitor in an influential public assessment of an artificial intelligence-based lending model.??

We also work in court to protect equitable access to opportunities. For example, the Firm represented a group of students and alumni of the University of North Carolina asking the Supreme Court to uphold precedent that permitted race-conscious university admissions programs.?

We will continue to fight to protect the rights of entities seeking to serve their communities fairly, both by helping entities design thoughtful and effective programs and by defending these programs if challenged.?

If you have any questions, comments or thoughts to share with Stephen or Reed on this issue, please reach out.

A Final Message: Our Best Defense is Collaboration

As we navigate this pivotal moment, your partnership remains essential. Together, we can build on our shared commitment to justice and equity, leveraging our collective expertise and resolve to safeguard civil rights. If you have any questions, need support, or want to discuss how we can collaborate further, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Thank you for standing with us in this critical fight—we are stronger together.

Sincerely,

The Relman Colfax Team