Selective covenant enforcement by race is a Fair Housing Act violation, Eleventh Circuit holds
Selective covenant enforcement by race is a Fair Housing Act violation, Eleventh Circuit holds
2026-09-10 · Georgia · Courts
What happened. The Eleventh Circuit — whose published decisions bind Georgia — has held that the Fair Housing Act reaches discrimination in how a homeowners association governs, not merely in how a home is sold.
Watts v. Joggers Run Property Owners Association, Inc., No. 22-13763, decided 7 April 2025. Abudu, J., with Jordan and Brasher, JJ. Published; reversed and remanded.1
The allegations
Sara Watts, an African-American homeowner and former board member, alleged her association cited her for contested violations, restricted her access to community amenities including the basketball court and non-designated parking, and mistreated her as a board member — because of race.
The alleged facts are what give the case its force: that the board did not want to encourage Black children to use the basketball courts; that a neighbour accosted her son and his friend with expletives to clear the court; that the association president referred to non-White individuals as “monkeys”; and that board members complained there were “too many black kids at the court.”
She pleaded 42 U.S.C. §§ 3604(b) and 3617, and 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1982.
What the district court held, and why it was wrong
The district court dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6), reasoning that post-acquisition HOA conduct was not a “term, condition, or privilege” of sale, nor a “service.” That reading would have put almost everything an association does beyond the Act.
The Eleventh Circuit reversed across the board, holding the district court “too narrowly construed the FHA, Section 1981, and Section 1982, and… Watts plausibly stated claims for relief for all the alleged statutory violations.”
The holding
“when a person enters into an enforceable agreement as part of purchasing a property, such as the mandatory HOA contract here, Section 3604(b) prohibits discrimination related to any additional privileges, services, and facilities afforded by that agreement.”
The reasoning is the part that matters. Association rules “establish the additional rights and obligations, beyond the traditional rights in the ownership of the home itself, that homeowners accept when purchasing their home,” and these “fall squarely within the common usage definitions of ‘privileges, services, and facilities associated with a dwelling.’”
The court anchored the result in Georgia State Conference of NAACP v. City of LaGrange, 940 F.3d 627 (11th Cir. 2019) — itself a Georgia case — HUD's regulation at 24 C.F.R. § 100.65(b)(4), and the Seventh Circuit's en banc decision in Bloch v. Frischholz, 587 F.3d 771 (2009).
Why this case reaches Georgia associations
Watts arose in Florida. It is nonetheless binding precedent in Georgia, because the Eleventh Circuit covers Georgia, Florida and Alabama, and the opinion is published.
It is now the controlling circuit statement of how far § 3604(b) reaches into association governance. Our sweep of Georgia appellate decisions for the 2025-2026 period found no Georgia state-court assistance-animal or reasonable-accommodation decision, and no published federal district-court community-association decision from the Northern, Middle or Southern Districts of Georgia. For fair-housing questions inside a Georgia association, Watts and Bhogaita v. Altamonte Heights Condo Ass'n, 765 F.3d 1277 (11th Cir. 2014), are the authorities.
What actually creates the exposure
Not policy. Georgia associations rarely adopt a discriminatory rule. The exposure is in discretion exercised unevenly, and the categories are predictable:
- Selective citation. The same violation cited at one address and not another. This is the most common allegation and the easiest to document from the association's own records.
- Amenity access. Pool rules, guest limits, court reservation systems and parking enforcement applied differently. Watts names the basketball court and non-designated parking specifically.
- Architectural review. Deferential standards make discretionary approval a natural place for uneven treatment to accumulate. A Georgia declaration that lets the board withhold approval “for any reason, including purely aesthetic considerations” — language the Court of Appeals enforced in Cotton v. Vinings Estates — is exactly the discretion that must be exercised evenly.
- Fine escalation and collection. Which accounts go to counsel and when.
- Board conduct. Watts's mistreatment as a board member was part of her claim, not background colour.
The record is the defence
The practical answer to Watts is not a policy statement. It is the ability to produce, on demand, a complete violation and enforcement log showing every instance of a given violation type and what was done about each.
Two Georgia developments make that easier to require and harder to avoid.
From 1 January 2027, § 43-17A-2(g) of the Georgia Property Owners' Bill of Rights Act requires an association to maintain, for not less than ten years at a Georgia office, all records “relating to any assessments, fines, fees, liens, and foreclosures.” Section 43-17A-2(f) makes those records subject to examination by the Secretary of State.2
An association that keeps those records properly has the evidence to rebut a selective-enforcement claim. An association that does not has a statutory violation and no defence.
What the new Georgia statute says about discrimination
Section 43-17A-7(12) gives owners the right to “challenge discriminatory practices by an owners' association as authorized by the laws of this state or federal law.” On its own it creates nothing — it authorises no cause of action and adds no remedy. What it does is point at the law that Watts construes.
Section 43-17A-7(11) is more concrete. It gives owners the right to be free from governing documents that “interfere with the freedom of residents to determine the composition of their household,” subject to an association's power to require a single housekeeping unit and to cap total occupants — and that power is itself expressly “subject to the laws of this state and federal law.” That imports the Fair Housing Act's familial-status protections directly into occupancy limits, which is where Georgia associations most often get into trouble on this subject.
One live enforcement change worth knowing
On 22 May 2026, HUD's Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity issued enforcement guidance providing that, for animal-related reasonable accommodation complaints, FHEO “will find reasonable cause and recommend charges only for those cases involving animals trained to provide disability-related assistance.”3
That narrows the administrative route. It does not repeal the Fair Housing Act, and the memo says expressly that nothing in it “affects the rights of parties to seek redress through a private action in court.” Georgia has no state statute broadening assistance-animal protection, so a Georgia owner with an untrained emotional-support animal now has a private suit and no administrative forum.
What to watch next
The first Georgia district-court decision applying Watts to a Georgia association. The Eleventh Circuit has answered the scope question; what is untested here is how Georgia's federal courts handle the proof problem — whether a plaintiff can get past summary judgment on enforcement-log statistics alone, or needs the kind of direct evidence Watts pleaded.
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