Reason wrote about our lawsuit, Lucinda LC and June Wheatley v. Jay Jones et al., challenging Virginia’s Fair Housing Law, arguing that it unlawfully forces landlords to submit to warrantless inspections of their property, records, and electronic devices.
Wheatley sued Virginia and its fair housing enforcement officials in federal court, arguing that the requirement she accept federal housing vouchers is unconstitutional.
Adam Schulman, an attorney at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute who is representing Wheatley, says Virginia’s voucher mandate presents two constitutional problems.
The federal government has no requirement that landlords accept Section 8 vouchers, he says. States imposing their own requirement on federal housing vouchers, therefore, violates the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.
Moreover, because the federal program requires landlords to agree to inspections of units that would be rented with Section 8 vouchers, compelling landlords to participate in the program forces them to submit to warrantless government searches.
That, argues Schulman, violates the Fourth Amendment’s protections against warrantless searches.
Read more at Reason.