## Facts

- Robert Kippen and Patricia DePoe, then an unmarried couple, sought to rent a house or duplex owned by David and Mary Peterson.
- The Petersons refused to rent because the couple was unmarried and intended to live together as husband and wife without being married.
- North Dakota law criminalized “openly and notoriously” cohabiting as husband and wife without marriage.
- Kippen and DePoe later married.
- The couple and the North Dakota Fair Housing Council sued under the North Dakota Human Rights Act, alleging housing discrimination based on “status with respect to marriage.”
- The district court dismissed the Fair Housing Council for lack of standing/real-party-in-interest status and granted summary judgment to the Petersons on the couple’s claim.

## Issues

1. Whether the North Dakota Fair Housing Council was an “aggrieved person” authorized to sue under the North Dakota Human Rights Act’s housing provisions.
2. Whether refusing to rent to an unmarried couple because they intended to cohabit constitutes discrimination based on “status with respect to marriage” under the Act.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of North Dakota affirmed.
- The Fair Housing Council lacked standing and was not a real party in interest under the Act on these facts.
- The Petersons’ refusal to rent to an unmarried couple intending to cohabit did not violate the Act’s prohibition on housing discrimination based on “status with respect to marriage.”
- The court construed the marital-status protection and the criminal cohabitation statute to operate consistently, rather than treating the Act as nullifying the cohabitation prohibition.

## Legal Principles

- Standing under the Act’s housing provisions requires the plaintiff to fit within the statute’s authorization to sue (including being an “aggrieved person”); an organization is not entitled to sue absent a qualifying statutory injury.
- Statutes addressing the same subject matter should be interpreted to give effect to each when reasonably possible.
- “Status with respect to marriage” protects a person’s marital classification, while a separate law may regulate conduct; a refusal based on planned illegal cohabitation may be treated as conduct-based rather than marital-status discrimination.
- Legislative retention of a long-standing criminal prohibition may support interpreting later civil-rights legislation to coexist with, rather than impliedly repeal, that prohibition.

## Conclusion

The court upheld dismissal of the organizational plaintiff for lack of statutory standing and held that a landlord’s refusal to rent to an unmarried couple intending to cohabit was not discrimination based on marital status under the North Dakota Human Rights Act because the refusal targeted prohibited conduct under state law.


N.D. Fair Hous. Council, Inc. v. Peterson, 625 N.W.2d 551 (N.D. 2001)