Sunday August 4, 2019
The landlord of this apartment building on Front Street recently won a discrimination lawsuit. (Photo: Jess Aloe)
Binti Mohamed had said Michael McLaurin told her and her children to "go back to Africa'', The Burlington Free Press reports.
A federal judge says a Burlington landlord didn't create a hostile housing environment for his Somali-American tenant in Vermont.
The Burlington Free Press reports Binti Mohamed had said Michael McLaurin told her and her children to "go back to Africa'' and entered her apartment without warming, deliberately pulling back the curtain while she was in the shower.
But Judge Christina Reiss wrote in a decision that Mohamed didn't prove McLaurin intended to expose Mohamed's body. McLaurin denied the allegations.
Reiss wrote that McLaurin's behavior was "offensive'' at times, but his conduct was "insufficiently severe or persistent to create a hostile housing environment.''
Mohamed accused McLaurin of violating the federal Fair Housing Act. She was the third Somali-American woman to do so since 2014. One settled and another's case was dismissed.