NDNY Refuses to Grant Preliinary Injunction in Case Alleging Disability Discrimination Under the ADA and FHA

This post was authored by Amy Lavine, Esq.

In the 2023 case Chestnut Hill NY, Inc. v. City of Kingston, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 184157 (NDNY 10/13/23), the District Court for the Northern District of New York dismissed claims that challenged the denial of a special use permit for a boarding home that primarily housed disabled individuals. The court concluded that the plaintiffs failed to establish a likelihood of success on their allegations that the permit denial violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Fair Housing Act (FHA), finding instead that the city’s fire safety concerns were sufficient legitimate and non-discriminatory reasons for denying the special use permit.

The case involved a boarding house for mentally ill and disabled individuals in the City of Kingston, New York. The boarding house had filed a lawsuit against the city several years earlier, where it claimed that a series of zoning disputes with the city had violated its rights under the ADA and the FHA. That case was eventually settled and the boarding house was permitted to continue operations, subject to the requirement that its permit had to be renewed on an annual basis. Over the next few years, the boarding house received a series of code violations for fire safety violations, including problems with the building’s fire alarm system and the structural integrity of its fire escape, and various complaints were also made to the city about overdoses, police activity, and improper oversight at the property. When the time came for the boarding house to renew its special use permit in 2023, the planning board directed it to submit an engineering report certifying the fire escape’s structural soundness, but the boarding house repeatedly failed to do so. After tabling the application for several months, the planning board voted to deny the boarding house’s permit renewal in July 2023. The denial was primarily based on the fire escape issue, but the planning board also discussed other alleged violations at the property, the complaints made by neighbors, and the board members’ own public safety concerns. Following the planning board’s decision, the boarding house then filed a new lawsuit against the city under the ADA and the FHA. The boarding house alleged claims for intentional discrimination, disparate impact, and failure to provide reasonable accommodation, and it sought declaratory and injunctive relief and award of compensatory and punitive damages.

The main issue before the court was whether the boarding house plaintiffs could meet the requirements for preliminary injunctive relief by showing a likelihood of success on their discrimination claims. The court concluded that they could not, because they failed to show that discrimination was a motivating factor for the denial of the boarding house’s special use permit. While the court acknowledged that some of the public comments reflected animus against the residents of the boarding house, none of these comments were made by or could be imputed to the planning board members, who had provided legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons related to fire safety in support of their decision to deny the permit. Similarly, although there was evidence the former mayor and other city officials had expressed disability-based animus against the boarding house during the previous litigation, the plaintiffs failed to present any evidence that the city officials who were involved in that case had any involvement in the current matter. Accordingly, the court found no basis to impute the discriminatory conduct by prior city officials to the officials who were involved in the present case.

The court also found that the boarding house plaintiffs failed to establish a likelihood of success on their reasonable accommodation claims, since they failed to identify what reasonable accommodations they had requested and the city refused to make. And to the extent that the plaintiffs alleged disparate impact violations under the ADA and the FHA, the court dismissed these claims as well because the plaintiffs failed to identify any specific neutral policy they were challenging or explain how that policy resulted in disparate impacts to members of a protected group as compared to similarly situated persons not affected by the policy.

The court agreed with the boarding house plaintiffs that they would suffer irreparable harm without any preliminary injunctive relief, since the boarding house would no longer be allowed to provide housing to disabled residents and would be forced to evict the current residents, but this factor was not enough to outweigh the plaintiffs’ failure to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits. And because the failure to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits was sufficient to deny injunctive relief, the court did not need not consider the balance of hardships and public interest factors. The court therefore denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction and dismissed the case.Chestnut Hill NY, Inc. v. City of Kingston, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 184157 (NDNY 10/13/23)