(The Center Square) – A Sacramento-based property management company has filed a federal lawsuit against California’s Civil Rights Department, charging Section 8 contracts violate a landlord’s Constitutional rights.
At issue is a provision in California’s anti-discrimination law (Section 12955) that requires landlords who accept Section 8 housing vouchers – the federal assistance program that helps low-income families afford market-rate rental housing – to sign contracts giving government officials broad access to inspect their properties, offices, and records without a warrant.
Thomas Manning and his firm, Tower Bridge Property Management, claim that this violates the Fourth Amendment.
“By requiring his participation in the Section 8 program, Mr. Manning and his company have to sign contracts providing that housing agencies have full and free access to not only the unit that the Section 8 tenant lives in, but also surrounding units and also their offices, their records, their computers,” said attorney Austin Waisanen of Pacific Legal Foundation, the law firm representing Manning.
The federal lawsuit is filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California.
Kevin Kish, the director of the Civil Rights Department, is named in the lawsuit.
“We’ll respond as appropriate in court,” the Civil Rights Department wrote in an email to The Center Square after the news wire asked for comment.
Pacific Legal Foundation is asking the federal court to do three things: declare that California cannot mandate participation in the federal Section 8 program, strike the requirement as an unconstitutional infringement on Fourth Amendment rights, and prohibit state officials from enforcing the policy against housing providers.
“All of us possess constitutional rights, and it’s just an unfortunate reality that the many layers of government we have- federal government, state government, local government- are often trying to tinker with the scope of those rights, even incrementally,” Waisanen said.
Manning’s company manages 300 properties across the state.
