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.

Denise Heberle - 08/03/2012
Asma Husain - 02/14/2016


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