The Alternatives to Marriage Project (AtMP) is deeply disturbed by news that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan approved of housing discrimination on the basis of marital status.

Yesterday, several news outlets reported that Kagan once opposed a California state law that prohibited housing discrimination on the basis of marital status, supporting a landlord who refused to rent an apartment to an unmarried couple because the landlord claimed their relationship ran counter to her religious beliefs.

AtMP Executive Director Nicky Grist says "Senators must ask Ms. Kagan whether she would uphold existing or new laws prohibiting discrimination in housing and employment on the basis of marital status.  If she does not present an updated understanding about the injustice of marital status discrimination, then we must oppose her nomination."

About half of U.S. states and many localities prohibit marital status discrimination in housing and/or employment, typically through their human rights codes.  AtMP has called for Congress to amend the federal Fair Housing Act to ban marital status discrimination in housing nationwide. 

Over one half of American households are headed by unmarried people, including nearly 6.15 million households headed by cohabiting couples (of whom 88.6% are different-sex couples).

According to the New York Times, when Ms. Kagan was an associate counsel to the White House in 1995-1996, she recommended federal intervention over a California Supreme Court ruling that a landlord's religious freedom was not burdened by a state law prohibiting housing discrimination on the basis of marital status.  

Syracuse University Law Professor Kevin Maillard, a member of AtMP's board of directors, says "Kagan seemed to react to the language used in the California plurality's reasoning.  Regardless of their phrasing, their decision was entirely correct: a landlord's religious freedom is no more burdened by potential tenants' marital status than it would be by the tenants' race or religion, and no modern court would consider allowing housing discrimination on those grounds." 

AtMP is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization advocating equality and fairness for all unmarried people, including people who are single, choose not to marry, cannot marry, or live together before marriage. AtMP believes that marriage is only one of many acceptable family forms, and that society should recognize and support healthy relationships in all their diversity.

Press interviews: Ms. Nicky Grist 347-987-1068/ 718-788-1911

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