Your landlord may not realize that the Fair Housing Act applies to such disabilities as cleft palate

Recently I, assisted by my oldest son, was applying for an apartment in a 55-and-older complex which provides both subsidized and marketplace rate housing. In one of the many documents was a checkbox, Qualified as disabled under the Fair Housing Act (which applies to "federally-assisted housing programs and activities"). I asked the person administering the application process if people with cleft palate qualified as disabled under the FHA. They said they thought those with a cleft weren't. I asked, Do you mind if we look it up?

We found that the following section of the Fair Housing Act clearly includes cleft palate among the recognized disabilities - 1. “speech and hearing impairments”; 2. “Federal nondiscrimination laws define a person with a disability to include any (1) individual with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities … Major life activities include … speaking … or … (3) individual who is regarded as having such an impairment.” [(3) covers the stigma of cleft palate, discriminatory presuppositions about birth defects, or responding to a visible disability by attempting to demean, degrade, or intimidate the person who has a disability.]

An earlier post, The Rights the Disabled Have under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, notes that in most cases if the local or state government program you are using (such as a public university, or public transit) receives Federal money in any of its activities, it is required to follow Federal civil rights rules regarding the disabled.

An important decision overturned was a case where the Court interpreted Section 504 as meaning that only clients of the departments of an entity which actually received federal funds had protection from disability discrimination. Under current law, because of the CRRA, protection applies to the entire agency. If a college's engineering department receives federal funds, students in the English department are also protected.

FHA Main:

Federal nondiscrimination laws provide housing protections for individuals with disabilities. These protections apply in most private housing, state and local government housing, public housing and any other federally-assisted housing programs and activities. The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing and housing-related transactions because of disability. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. Titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability in all programs, services, and activities of public entities and by private entities that own, operate, or lease places of public accommodation.

The applicable passage:

Federal nondiscrimination laws define a person with a disability to include any (1) individual with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; (2) individual with a record of such impairment; or (3) individual who is regarded as having such an impairment.

In general, a physical or mental impairment includes, but is not limited to, examples of conditions such as orthopedic, visual, speech and hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, autism, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), developmental disabilities, mental illness, drug addiction, and alcoholism.

Some impairments are readily observable, while others may be invisible. Observable impairments may include, but are not limited to, blindness or low vision, deafness or being hard of hearing, mobility limitations, and other types of impairments with observable symptoms or effects, such as intellectual impairments (including some types of autism), neurological impairments (e.g., stroke, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, or brain injury), mental illness, or other diseases or conditions that affect major life activities or bodily functions.

The term “major life activities” includes those activities that are important to daily life. Major life activities include, for example, walking, speaking, hearing, seeing, breathing, working, learning, performing manual tasks, and caring for oneself.

Commentary: Under the FHA, the community in, for example, a retirement community, is not allowed to reject a person having a stigmatizing disability, such as a birth defect, on the basis of that birth defect, any more than that same community would be allowed to reject a person of color, on the basis of dislike of people of color. Public sentiment is not a sufficient reason to deny any person the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws.