Post by Steve KrausA couple of friends just got evicted from their apartment
in LaGrange, IL. They were month to month / no lease.
The notice of eviction stated they were being evicted
because the woman had not disclosed to the landlord that
she had asthma and they would not have rented to them if
she had. The notice is in writing.
1) Is it legal to not rent to someone for a medical condition?
2) Or to evict for a medical condition, disclosed or not disclosed?
3) Can a landlord ask medical questions (not that they did)?
4) Not that she can prove this as it was oral but it's a lie
anyway as she asked a lot about pets and smoking and said
she was asking because she had asthma.
5) Is there a basis of complaint if so who would the complain
to?
You indicated in a later posting that these questions may be moot
because your friends chose to act without first obtaining well
informed advice or otherwise educating themselves about applicable law
and may not want to follow up on what may be otherwise available
answers to your Q.5.
Still, because your questions appear to be seriously intended in
intellectual even if maybe no longer in practical terms, you might
want to think more about some of your (and most of your respondents')
assumptions even though your Q.1, Q.2, and Q.3 in the generalized form
you post them are not yet reliably analyzable while you predicate your
Q.4 on a serious (and, it seems, also superfluous) misassumption which
pervades your entire posting/query.
The crux of the matter analytically speaking is that, contrary to the
predominant responses to you I've so far seen, the actual answers to
your Q.1 and Q.2 if based only on what you say so far *might* be "Yes"
BUT, depending on facts you have not yet to clarify yet which you seem
to suggest exist, probably could be "No" - although your not
adequately explained "medical condition" characterization is merely
suggestive and so is not sufficiently informative for these purposes.
And while your respondents are correct that there ordinarily is no
obligation for an Ill. residential landlord to provide any
justification in the landlord's written notice terminating a
month-to-month tenancy or otherwise to provide justification for so
doing and that a landlord's reason for such termination lawfully might
(in most circumstances) be even perverse or arbitrary, so saying
without more begs the answer to this question:
Has the landlord transmuted an otherwise lawful act
(at will termination of a monthly tenancy) into a law-
prohibited conduct that would make termination of
the particular lease at issue not only unlawful but also
remediable?
In the scenario you summarize, even if your friends' former landlord
was not required to give a reason for the termination, further factual
elaboration by you by you answering these two questions might confirm
(and your reference to asthma at least presumptively suggests that you
would confirm) that the reason the landlord gratuitously chose and the
landlord's acts to implement that reason were unlawful and, if the
adversely affected persons acted diligently, probably redressable:
Is the nature of your friend's (presumably professionally
diagnosed and being treated?) asthma such that it is a
physical impairment that substantially limits one or more
of her major life activities, i.e., is she a person with a
"disability" as that term is defined by federal and also by
Ill. state law?
If she suffers from asthma even if perhaps not to
an extent that fully meets the "substantially limits one
or more major life activities" legislative Americans
with Disability Act and parallel state law standard, was
she (even if perhaps in part mistakenly) "regarded [by
her landlord] as having such an impairment" and was
the landlord's such belief a substantial motivating factor
for the termination of her tenancy?
And while you have yet to make clear what the answer to the first of
these questions would be, your characterization of the landlord's
termination notice if accurate goes a long way to answering the second
one.
A third question your queries implicitly raise in this connection but
also without you having posted facts to enable an answer is whether
your friends' former apartment was in a building with housing
accommodations only for four or fewer families living independently of
each other and, if so, whether the landlord resided in one of them at
the relevant times, since such premises are exempt from the following
requirements and related remedies:
The federal Fair Housing Act and federal ADA and their cumulative/
supplemental Ill. state law analogs prohibit discrimination in the
rental of non-exempt housing accommodations including by a landlord
making unavailable or denying a dwelling to any renter because of the
renter's disability or because the landlord regards the prospective or
actual tenant as being such a person; and these same laws also
provide, in substance, that a non-exempt landlord who/which does not
reasonably accommodate the needs of a person the landlord knows is or
regards as being a person with a disability is one form of unlawful
and also remediable discrimination.
Your friends could have sought (and, depending on the sorts of facts
to which I refer above, maybe they still may and should seek)
assistance from the Disability Rights Bureau of the Ill. Attorney
General's office or Ill. Dept. of Human Rights (IDHR) or, if you had
identified the municipality in which they resided, very like other not
difficult to find administrative resources.