Almost lost by the wave of responses to the Supreme Court\u2019s decisions last week upholding the Affordable Care Act and allowing gays and lesbians to marry was the significance of the Court\u2019s third decision \u2014 on housing discrimination.<\/p>\n
In a 5-4 ruling, the Court found<\/a> that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 requires plaintiffs to show only that the effect of a policy is discriminatory, not that defendants intended to discriminate.<\/p>\n The decision is important in the fight against economic apartheid in America \u2014 racial segregation on a much larger geographic scale than ever before.<\/p>\n The decision is likely to\u00a0affect everything from bank lending practices whose effect is to harm low-income non-white borrowers, to zoning laws that favor higher-income white homebuyers.<\/p>\n First, some background. Americans are segregating ever more by income in terms of where we live.<\/p>\n Thirty years ago most cities contained a broad spectrum of residents from wealthy to poor. Today, entire cities are mostly rich<\/a> (San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle) or mostly\u00a0impoverished<\/a> (Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia).<\/p>\n