Faribault settles ACLU lawsuit over rental housing laws

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, representing seven people who alleged a rental licensing ordinance was aimed at driving racial minorities out of Faribault, settled a lawsuit with the city on Wednesday.

The city will pay $685,000 to them and the Somali Community Resettlement Services, which was also a plaintiff in the suit. Faribault will also reform its ordinance in a way that protects people of color from discrimination, said Alejandro Ortiz, attorney for the ACLU. The nonprofit argued that the ordinance targeted Somali people, other Black residents and immigrants, according to the suit filed in U.S. District Court.

City officials decided to settle the case to avoid further costs of litigation, said attorney Paul D. Reuvers, who represented Faribault, adding the ordinance was not discriminatory and was in place to protect the health and safety of the community.

He said the city made only minor changes to the ordinance, which remains in place.

"The ACLU agreed that the ordinances remain intact. It's hard for me to believe the ACLU continues to believe that our ordinances are discriminatory when they agreed that what we have is legitimate," Reuvers said.

But ACLU-MN Legal Director Teresa Nelson said in a news release that "this settlement sends a clear message that this discriminatory conduct, which robbed immigrants and Black people of their homes and pushed them out of the city, will no longer be tolerated here or across the nation."

A law passed in 2014 requires Faribault landlords to get a rental license from the city. To get and keep the license, landlords had to take part in the city's Crime Free Housing Program.

That program allowed the city to evict renters if any member of the household or a guest engaged in what police deemed to be criminal activity, even if no arrest was made or charge was filed, according to the suit. That means renters could be evicted, for example, if neighbors called police with complaints of excessive noise.

Under the reforms, landlords are no longer required to perform background checks on potential tenants. If they do, they are only allowed to use a system that does not list misdemeanors, arrests that did not lead to a conviction or felony convictions that are more than five years old, Ortiz said.

Tenants also have a right to appeal determinations of disorderly conduct. Complaints of potential domestic abuse can no longer be used as a violation against a tenant, according to the settlement. Children under the age of 2 no longer count in a household's occupancy limit.

Somali Community Resettlement Services helped families in the city that faced eviction, according to the ACLU news release. Some Somali families were forced out after a baby was born, according to the release.