Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Being a Lawyer Isn’t Quite as Bad as Being a Terrorist

Remember the discussion a while back about whether one set of tenants in an apartment building should be able to prevent another tenant from smoking in the latter’s apartment? The two non-smokers are lawyers Jonathan Selbin and Jenny Selbin. The NY Times reports that the Selbin’s letter to their neighbor opened with the following:

“As you may not be aware, we are both lawyers and both litigators, for whom the usual barriers to litigation are minimal.”

(HT: Olson) In so doing, the Selbins just made life harder not for smokers in New York City, but for their fellow lawyers:

Some landlords are leery of renting to lawyers, but the attitudes of co-op and condo boards toward lawyers wishing to buy into a building have changed, and have been fairly benign in recent years, managing agents say. After all, many lawyers serve on building boards and add, at the minimum, a patina of professionalism to meetings.

It turns out that while it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, age, national origin and many other factors, discrimination against someone because he or she is a member of the legal profession is perfectly legal. This became clear in a 1977 case, which lawyers sometimes cite as a joke on lawyers. When the general counsel of the city’s Commission on Human Rights, a divorced black woman, sued a landlord for discrimination for refusing to rent to her, the court found that the landlord, who had rented to many black tenants and many women, had a right to refuse to give her a lease because she was a lawyer and might sue.

I read that case in law school and always thought it was a hoot. (Of course, I don’t rent, I live in single family home that’s not part of a home association, and I live in Los Angeles, California, where the only people you’re allowed to discriminate against are Republicans. So it’s never had a chance to bite me in the butt.)

Will the Selbin’s nasty conduct prompt a return to the days in which lawyers were discriminated against?

Anthony vanEyck Miller, a vice president of Bellmarc Realty, says boards don’t mind lawyers, but he warns buyers about using the word “litigator” on applications. “It is almost pejorative in the context,” he said. “It is not quite as bad as terrorist, but it makes people nervous.”

Not quite as bad as terrorist! So don’t mention the “l word”! Makes you proud to be a lawyer.