## Facts

- In the late 1950s, Boston’s urban renewal program cleared the Old West End through eminent domain, displacing thousands of households; few displaced residents were African American.
- Massachusetts urban renewal law and the applicable renewal plan provided displaced families a first preference for tenancy in new housing built on the cleared site.
- Decades later, a mixed-income HUD-assisted development, West End Place, was planned for the area.
- In separate fair-housing litigation, a federal consent decree required HUD and local entities to take steps so Boston HUD-assisted housing would reflect the city’s racial composition rather than perpetuate segregation.
- To implement West End Place leasing, agencies and the developer used a marketing/lottery plan that:
  - reserved a portion of units for “former West Enders,” but
  - capped the effective weight of that preference to avoid an occupancy outcome inconsistent with the consent decree’s integration goals.
- Former West Enders (almost all white) alleged the cap denied them the state-law preference “because most former West Enders are white,” violating equal protection and federal civil rights law.

## Issues

1. Whether limiting a facially race-neutral “former West Ender” preference to achieve an integrated tenant mix constituted a racial classification triggering strict scrutiny.
2. Whether the complaint plausibly alleged intentional discrimination against white former West Enders in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
3. Whether race-conscious efforts to comply with a fair-housing consent decree and Fair Housing Act objectives are unconstitutional discrimination against whites.

## Decision

- The First Circuit affirmed dismissal for failure to state a federal claim.
- The court held the plan did not classify applicants by race; it adjusted a nonracial preference defined by prior displacement.
- The complaint did not plausibly allege defendants acted with a purpose to disadvantage whites as whites, as opposed to pursuing compliance with federal fair-housing obligations.
- Any dispute about the scope of the Massachusetts statutory preference was primarily a matter of state law and did not, as pleaded, establish a federal constitutional or statutory violation.

## Legal Principles

- A policy is not automatically a racial classification subject to strict scrutiny merely because race was considered in pursuing integration; the operative question is whether government allocates benefits or burdens by race.
- A facially neutral classification that correlates with race does not become a racial classification solely through “but-for” causation arguments about its racial composition.
- Equal protection liability generally requires intentional discrimination against a protected group, not merely disparate effects or race-conscious motivations tied to compliance with fair-housing mandates.
- Government actions taken to comply with court-ordered fair-housing remedies and to avoid perpetuating segregation can constitute legitimate, non-invidious objectives where the mechanism does not impose explicit race-based exclusions.

## Conclusion

The First Circuit concluded that capping a displaced-resident tenancy preference to satisfy federal fair-housing integration obligations did not amount to a race-based classification or intentional discrimination against white applicants, and it upheld dismissal of the federal claims.


Raso v. Lago, 135 F.3d 11 (1st Cir. 1998)