United States of America v. Donald T. Sterling et al., 2006-2009.
United States of America v. Donald T. Sterling et al., 2006-2009.
The lawsuit, filed by the Justice Department in August 2006, alleged that the defendants, Donald T. Sterling, his wife Rochelle Sterling, and the Sterling Family Trust, engaged in discriminatory rental practices on the basis of race, national origin, and familial status (having children under 18) at various apartment buildings that they own and manage in Los Angeles. Among other things, the suit alleged that the defendants discriminated against non-Korean tenants and prospective tenants at buildings the defendants owned in the Koreatown area of Los Angeles. We were hired by Plaintiff to investigate these claims. We had access to all tenant records in the Koreatown buildings. Using both time series and cross sectional analyses of the tenant records, as well as an analysis of Census data, we found a disproportionate decline in the number of Hispanic and African American renters. Sterling paid the largest monetary payment ever obtained by the Justice Department, at the time, in the settlement of a case alleging housing discrimination in the rental of apartments.