article: On August 10, 2010, the United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky against owners, designers, builders and managers of an apartment complex, claiming the multifamily dwellings built for first occupancy after March 13, 1991 were not accessible to persons with disabilities in violation of the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §3601-3619. The plaintiff sought injunctive, declaratory, and monetary relief. Specifically, Plaintiff claimed that, among other things, the public use portions of the dwellings were unusable to persons with disabilities; that doors on ground floor units are not wide enought to allow passage by persons using wheelchairs, that the interior of the dwellings do not contain required features of adaptive design, such as accessible routes, light switches, electrical outlets, or useable batrooms and kitchens. Further, Plaintiff claimed that exterior areas including parking lots have excessive abrupt level changes, excessive running slopes, and cross slopes that make maneuvering wheelchairs and other mobility aids dangerous. On December 8, 2011, the Court approved a three-year Consent Decree agreed to by the parties. Besides a general injunction against discrimination on the basis of disability, the decree required, among other things, specific retrofits to be made and reviewed by a neutral inspector, recordkeeping and release of information concering any new construction, training of employees as to the requirements of the decree, and a total payment of $275,000 to identified aggrieved persons. On December 15, 2014, the Court (Judge Charles R. Simpson, III) entered an order upon the expiration of the Consent Decree. The United States did not move to extend the decree. The case was dismissed with prejudice.
summary: This 2010 fair housing case was brought by the United States in the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, challenging the failure of the owners, operators, designers, and builders of a multi-family apartment complex to make the public use spaces and the apartments themselves accessible to persons with disabilities. The case was resolved in 2011 with a three year consent decree that, in addition to general anti discrimination provisions, included specific requirements for retrofitting non-compliant areas of the complex, and payment of $275,000 to persons damaged by the violations.