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Landlords would have more protection from frivolous lawsuits under proposed bill

TIFFANY L. PARKS
Special to the Legal News

Published: May 5, 2015

A Cincinnati lawmaker has filed a bill into the legislature that would exempt certain landlords and home sellers from the housing discrimination provisions of the Ohio Civil Rights Law.

“Senate Bill 134 seeks to aid the individuals who have found themselves in a no-win financial situation when faced with allegations of discrimination,” said Sen. Bill Seitz in sponsor testimony for the proposed legislation.

Seitz, a Republican, said the bill was crafted to conform existing Ohio fair housing laws to federal fair housing laws, thereby making the state substantially comparable to federal law with regard to fees and damages assessed when discriminatory practices by a landlord have been alleged.

“Within Ohio there is a financial incentive for fair housing organizations to file charges of discrimination against housing providers and while we unquestionably want actual cases of discrimination to be addressed and resolved, complainants are benefiting from egregious charges leveled at the housing providers who are often forced to settle the case or risk becoming entangled in a lengthy and costly process while they attempt to dispute the charges,” he said.

Often, these are landlords who have a few rental units as a way to generate a small source of income.

“The large apartment complexes have attorneys able to advise their clients on the practices and procedures to be,” Seitz said.

SB 134, which is joined by a companion measure, House Bill 149, is modeled after a proposal Seitz introduced in the last General Assembly, Senate Bill 349.

Seitz said the reintroduced version has been revised to address complaints that federal funding for the Ohio Civil Rights Commission would be in jeopardy if Ohio’s guidelines were not substantially equivalent to federal law.

According to a bill summary, the Ohio Fair Housing Law generally prohibits discrimination in renting, selling or negotiating for the rental or sale of a home.

SB 134 would exempt the sale or rental of any single-family home by the owner from the discrimination prohibition if specific situations apply, including: the owner does not own more than three such homes at any one time or the bonafide owner does not own any interest nor is there owned or reserved on the owner’s behalf any right to all or a portion of the sale or rental proceeds from more than three such homes at any one time.

If a single-family home is sold by an owner not residing in the home at the time of the sale or who was not the most recent resident of the home prior to the sale, the bill’s exemption would only apply with respect to one sale within any 24-month period.

The summary states that the use of attorneys, escrow agents, abstractors, title companies and other such professional assistance as necessary to perfect or transfer the title of a home would not be prohibited.

In addition, the rental of a room or unit in a home that has four or fewer rental units would be exempt from the prohibition against rental discrimination if the owner actually maintains and occupies the living quarters as the owner’s residence.

With regard to the assessment of civil penalties for housing discrimination, Seitz said if the civil rights commission finds that a person is engaging in unlawful housing discrimination, the commission would be permitted to order the respondent to pay actual damages, civil penalties and attorney’s fees, instead of requiring them to be paid.

“This provision parallels federal law, which is permissive, not mandatory,” Seitz said.

The bill would allow all successful complainants, including fair housing agencies, to receive an award of actual damages or civil penalties, up to $10,000, in an administrative hearing if a violation is discovered.

“Current Ohio law allows the OCRC to award punitive damages in an administrative hearing; federal law does not, but allows civil penalties,” Seitz said.

“By changing our nomenclature from ‘punitive damages’ to ‘civil penalties’ we will more nearly approximate federal law, and the $10,000 cap on such penalties that is in this bill mirrors the cap in Missouri, a state whose housing laws HUD has designated as substantially equivalent to federal law.”

The measure also would allow a respondent to be permitted to recover reasonable attorney’s fees in an administrative hearing when there has been a finding of no probable cause and would preclude the OCRC from amending its complaint once the administrative hearing is underway.

“It is unheard of to allow any litigant to come up with new or amended charges in the middle of a trial,” Seitz said, adding that in the time he’s been working on the proposed legislation, he has received a substantial number of complaints about how respondents have been treated in commission proceedings.

“When we make Ohio housing law more like federal housing law, we promote certainty and relieve landlords of the burden of understanding the differences in law, procedure and remedy that now exist between Ohio and federal law.”

SB 134, co-sponsored by Sens. John Eklund and Tom Patton, is slated for a hearing today before the Senate Civil Justice Committee.

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