Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommate.com, LLC

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit · 2012 · Property

666 F.3d 1216 (9th Cir. 2012)

Updated July 23, 2026

PropertyFair Housing ActRoommate selectionOrganizational standingConstitutional avoidanceFHAFEHAroommates

Facts

Roommate.com operates a website that helps people find roommates. To create a profile, users answer questions about sex, sexual orientation, and whether children will be living with them, and they may state preferences for those same characteristics in desired roommates; the site then matches users and allows searches based on those criteria. The Fair Housing Councils sued, alleging that requiring disclosure of those traits and sorting, steering, matching, and publishing preferences based on them violated the FHA and California FEHA. Before filing suit, the Councils also investigated Roommate and undertook non-litigation education and outreach efforts directed at discriminatory roommate advertising.

Issue

Do the FHA and FEHA apply to the selection of roommates in shared living units, such that Roommate.com violates those statutes by prompting, sorting, matching, and publishing user preferences based on sex, sexual orientation, and familial status? Also, did the Fair Housing Councils have organizational standing to sue?

Rule

An organization has direct standing when a defendant's conduct causes a diversion of resources independent of litigation costs and frustrates the organization's mission. Where the FHA's term "dwelling" and FEHA's term "housing accommodation" can fairly be read either to include or exclude shared living arrangements, courts must adopt the narrower construction excluding roommate selection if applying the statutes would raise serious constitutional concerns under the right of intimate association and privacy in the home.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

A nonprofit fair-housing group in Phoenix, Desert Access Housing, discovered that a roommate-listing app encouraged users to state preferences about sex and whether children would live in the home. Before filing suit, Desert Access Housing assigned staff to investigate the app and launched new public workshops and mailers addressing discriminatory roommate advertising, using funds that otherwise would have supported unrelated educational programs.

If the nonprofit sues, which is the strongest argument that it has organizational standing?

Explanation. The majority held that an organization has direct standing when the defendant's conduct causes a diversion of resources independent of litigation and frustrates the organization's mission. Pre-suit investigation, education, and outreach undertaken in response to the challenged conduct are enough; litigation costs alone are not.