## Facts

- Quinn Bouley rented an upstairs apartment in a two-unit building owned by her landlord, Jacqueline Young-Sabourin, who lived in the downstairs unit.
- Bouley lived there with her husband, Daniel Swedo, and her children.
- For roughly the first two and a half months of the tenancy, Bouley received no complaints about noise, behavior, or any other lease-related problem and had minimal contact with Young-Sabourin.
- One evening, Swedo physically assaulted Bouley in the apartment, and police responded; Swedo fled and was later arrested.
- Within less than 72 hours after the domestic-violence incident, Young-Sabourin told Bouley to leave and served a notice terminating the tenancy.
- Bouley sued under the Fair Housing Act (FHA), alleging that terminating her tenancy because she was a victim of domestic violence amounted to discrimination “because of sex.”
- The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment based on the summary-judgment record, including deposition testimony and related materials.

## Issues

1. Whether a landlord’s attempt to terminate a female tenant’s tenancy shortly after a domestic-violence incident (in which the tenant was the victim) can support a claim of sex discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.
2. Whether, on the summary-judgment record, either party was entitled to judgment as a matter of law, or whether genuine disputes of material fact required trial on intent and justification.

## Decision

- The court denied Young-Sabourin’s motion for summary judgment.
- The court denied Bouley’s cross-motion for summary judgment.
- The court held that the record contained genuine disputes of material fact about the reason for the termination notice and whether the challenged action was taken “because of sex” within the meaning of the FHA.

## Legal Principles

- Summary judgment is improper when the evidence permits competing reasonable inferences on facts that affect liability under the governing law; credibility and weight of evidence are for the factfinder.
- The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in the terms, conditions, or privileges of renting a dwelling, including discrimination “because of sex.” (42 U.S.C. § 3604)
- FHA intentional-discrimination claims commonly proceed under a burden-shifting framework: the plaintiff may establish a prima facie case; the defendant may articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason; the plaintiff may then show that reason is a pretext for discrimination.
- At summary judgment, temporal proximity and the surrounding circumstances can support an inference of discriminatory motive when an adverse housing action follows immediately after an event associated with a protected classification.
- A factfinder may consider evidence that domestic violence disproportionately affects women when evaluating whether adverse action taken against a tenant due to domestic violence victimization can amount to sex-based discrimination.

## Conclusion

In *Bouley v. Young-Sabourin*, the District of Vermont denied both parties’ summary-judgment motions in an FHA case alleging sex discrimination where a landlord moved to terminate a woman’s tenancy within 72 hours after she was assaulted by her husband. The court found that the timing and context could permit a jury to infer discrimination, while the landlord’s asserted reasons for the termination also created fact questions, making judgment as a matter of law inappropriate for either side.


Bouley v. Young-Sabourin, 394 F. Supp. 2d 675 (2005)