A landlord in Minneapolis tells an applicant the building does not take Section 8. A lender quotes a worse rate in one part of the city than another. A property manager tells a couple that the two-bedroom is “really for a family.” Whether any of those is unlawful — and which statute makes it unlawful — depends on a list.
There are two lists. The federal Fair Housing Act has one. The Minnesota Human Rights Act has a longer one. Minnesota tenants and buyers regularly have a state claim where they have no federal claim at all, and lawyers who reach for 42 U.S.C. § 3604 first sometimes miss it.
What Minnesota prohibits
Minn. Stat. § 363A.09 is the housing provision of the Minnesota Human Rights Act. Subdivision 1 applies to “an owner, lessee, sublessee, assignee, or managing agent of, or other person having the right to sell, rent or lease any real property, or any agent of any of these,” and makes it an unfair discriminatory practice for such a person:
- “to refuse to sell, rent, or lease or otherwise deny to or withhold from any person or group of persons any real property because of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, disability, sexual orientation, or familial status”;
- to discriminate on those same grounds “in the terms, conditions or privileges of the sale, rental or lease of any real property or in the furnishing of facilities or services in connection therewith”; and
- to print, circulate, or post an advertisement or sign, or to use an application form, or to “make any record or inquiry in connection with the prospective purchase, rental, or lease of real property” that expresses “directly or indirectly, any limitation, specification, or discrimination” on those grounds.
That third clause is worth pausing on. It reaches the inquiry, not just the decision. A rental application that asks a question it has no business asking can violate the statute even if the applicant is approved.
Subdivision 2 applies the same prohibitions to real estate brokers and salespeople. Subdivision 3 applies them to banks, mortgage companies, insurers, and other lenders — and adds a redlining provision that has no federal counterpart in the same form: it is an unfair discriminatory practice for a lender “to discriminate against any person or group of persons who desire to purchase, lease, acquire, construct, rehabilitate, repair, or maintain real property in a specific urban or rural area or any part thereof solely because of the social, economic, or environmental conditions of the area” in the terms of financial assistance. Subdivision 4 prohibits blockbusting. Subdivision 6 prohibits coercion, intimidation, threats, and interference with anyone exercising these rights — including someone who “aided or encouraged a third person” in exercising them, which is the provision that protects a witness or an advocate.
The five classes Minnesota adds
The federal Fair Housing Act’s core prohibitions, 42 U.S.C. § 3604(a) and (b), cover refusals and discriminatory terms “because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.” Disability — “handicap,” in the statute’s older vocabulary — is covered separately by § 3604(f), and appears alongside the other classes in the advertising, misrepresentation, and blockbusting provisions of § 3604(c), (d), and (e).
Minnesota’s list in § 363A.09 contains every one of those and five more: creed, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Three of those additions carry real weight in practice.
Status with regard to public assistance. Minn. Stat. § 363A.03, subd. 47, defines it as “the condition of being a recipient of federal, state, or local assistance, including medical assistance, or of being a tenant receiving federal, state, or local subsidies, including rental assistance or rent supplements.” A blanket refusal to accept a Housing Choice voucher is, on the face of that definition, a refusal to rent because of a tenant’s status with regard to public assistance. There is no federal analogue — the Fair Housing Act does not list source of income.
Marital status. Defined at § 363A.03, subd. 24, as “whether a person is single, married, remarried, divorced, separated, or a surviving spouse and, in employment cases, includes protection against discrimination on the basis of the identity, situation, actions, or beliefs of a spouse or former spouse.” Federal fair housing law does not cover marital status at all.
Gender identity. Now separately enumerated in § 363A.09 and defined at § 363A.03, subd. 50, as “a person’s inherent sense of being a man, woman, both, or neither,” which “may or may not correspond to their assigned sex at birth or to their primary or secondary sex characteristics.”
Minnesota’s definitions of the shared classes also run broader. “Familial status,” § 363A.03, subd. 18, covers not only minors in a household but “residing with and caring for one or more individuals who lack the ability to meet essential requirements for physical health, safety, or self-care,” and extends the protection to “any person who is pregnant or is in the process of securing legal custody” of a minor. And “race,” subd. 36a, “is inclusive of traits associated with race, including but not limited to hair texture and hair styles such as braids, locs, and twists.”
Disparate treatment and disparate impact
Most housing cases are disparate-treatment cases: the plaintiff says the defendant acted because of a protected characteristic. Proof is usually circumstantial — inconsistent explanations, a comparator who was treated differently, a tester who got a different answer.
Disparate impact is the other theory: a neutral policy that falls harder on a protected group. The Supreme Court held in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 576 U.S. 519 (2015), that “[d]isparate-impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act.” But it fenced the theory in carefully. “Disparate-impact liability mandates the ‘removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers,’ not the displacement of valid governmental policies,” 576 U.S. at 540, and “[a] disparate-impact claim relying on a statistical disparity must fail if the plaintiff cannot point to a defendant’s policy or policies causing that disparity,” id. at 521. That “robust causality requirement” is where most impact claims are actually lost.
HUD’s regulation, 24 C.F.R. § 100.500, supplies the burden-shifting sequence. The plaintiff must prove “that a challenged practice caused or predictably will cause a discriminatory effect”; the defendant must then prove the practice “is necessary to achieve one or more substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interests”; and the plaintiff may still prevail by proving those interests “could be served by another practice that has a less discriminatory effect.” § 100.500(c)(1)–(3). The regulation also warns that a legally sufficient justification “must be supported by evidence and may not be hypothetical or speculative.” § 100.500(b)(2).
Note where that framework lives: in the federal statute and HUD’s rule. Chapter 363A does not contain a comparable codified discriminatory-effects standard for housing. A plaintiff who intends to run an impact theory should understand that the developed, regulation-backed version of it is the federal one.
Accommodation and modification — and a Minnesota trap
Federal law imposes two distinct disability duties in housing, and they are often confused.
A reasonable modification is a physical change to the premises. Under 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(A), discrimination includes “a refusal to permit, at the expense of the handicapped person, reasonable modifications of existing premises occupied or to be occupied by such person if such modifications may be necessary to afford such person full enjoyment of the premises” — and in a rental, the landlord may, where reasonable, condition permission on the tenant agreeing to restore the interior afterward. The tenant pays.
A reasonable accommodation is a change to a rule. Under § 3604(f)(3)(B), discrimination includes “a refusal to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services, when such accommodations may be necessary to afford such person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.” Waiving a no-pets policy for an assistance animal is the classic example. The landlord bears the cost of administering the exception.
Here is the Minnesota trap. Minn. Stat. § 363A.21, subd. 1, the real-property exemption, contains this sentence: “Except as provided elsewhere in this chapter or other state or federal law, no person or group of persons selling, renting, or leasing property is required to modify the property in any way, or exercise a higher degree of care for a person having a disability than for a person who does not have a disability.” Read carelessly, that looks like Minnesota law abolishing the modification duty. Read as written, the opening clause — “[e]xcept as provided elsewhere in this chapter or other state or federal law” — preserves whatever federal law requires. The federal duty under § 3604(f)(3) is untouched. What the sentence means is that chapter 363A itself is not the source of a general property-modification obligation, not that no such obligation exists.
Minnesota does supply one express disability right in this area. Section 363A.09, subd. 5, makes it an unfair discriminatory practice “to deny full and equal access to real property . . . to a person who has a disability and who uses a service animal,” and provides that the person “may not be required to pay extra compensation for the service animal but is liable for damage done to the premises by the service animal.”
Who is exempt
The federal exemptions are broader than most tenants expect. Section 3603(b) removes from § 3604 — “other than subsection (c),” the advertising provision — a single-family house sold or rented by a private individual owner who owns no more than three such houses, sells without a broker, and publishes no discriminatory advertisement; and “rooms or units in dwellings containing living quarters occupied or intended to be occupied by no more than four families living independently of each other, if the owner actually maintains and occupies one of such living quarters as his residence.”
Minnesota’s exemptions in § 363A.21 are narrower and differently drawn. Subdivision 1 exempts only rooms in a nonprofit-run residence home where the discrimination is by sex, and the rental by “a resident owner or occupier of a one-family accommodation of a room or rooms in the accommodation” where the discrimination is by sex, gender identity, marital status, status with regard to public assistance, sexual orientation, or disability. Subdivision 2 handles familial status separately: the familial-status prohibition does not apply to “any owner-occupied building containing four or fewer dwelling units or housing for elderly persons,” with “housing for elderly persons” defined by three specific tests, including the 55-and-over standard requiring that at least 80 percent of units be occupied by at least one person 55 or older, with published policies demonstrating that intent.
The upshot: an exemption under one statute is not an exemption under the other. Check both.
Where the claim goes, and what it is worth
Under the MHRA, § 363A.28, subd. 1, an aggrieved person may bring a civil action in district court under § 363A.33, subd. 1, or file a verified charge with the Commissioner of Human Rights; § 363A.28, subd. 3(a), adds a third door, a charge with a local human rights commission. Those are alternatives, not stages. Section 363A.07, subd. 3, is blunt about it: “The exercise of such choice in filing a charge with one agency shall preclude the option of filing the same charge with the other agency.” The timing rules in chapter 363A are short and are the most common way these claims are lost — they are mapped in detail in our article on the MHRA’s deadlines, which you should read before assuming you have time. The choice between the state and federal routes, and what it costs you, is the subject of MHRA or federal: choosing your forum.
On the federal side, 42 U.S.C. § 3613(a)(1)(A) allows an aggrieved person to sue in federal or state court “not later than 2 years after the occurrence or the termination of an alleged discriminatory housing practice,” and § 3613(a)(1)(B) stops that clock while a HUD administrative proceeding is pending. A HUD or state-agency complaint is not a prerequisite: under § 3613(a)(2) an aggrieved person may sue “whether or not a complaint has been filed under section 3610(a) of this title and without regard to the status of any such complaint” — though the same paragraph bars suit where HUD or a state or local agency has already obtained a conciliation agreement with that person’s consent, except to enforce it.
The remedies differ. Federal: § 3613(c)(1) permits “actual and punitive damages” plus injunctive and other equitable relief, and § 3613(c)(2) allows the prevailing party a reasonable attorney’s fee and costs. Minnesota: § 363A.33, subd. 6, gives either side “a jury trial”; subd. 8(a) directs the court to order compensatory damages “including mental anguish or suffering, in an amount up to three times the actual damages sustained,” permits punitive damages under Minn. Stat. § 549.20, and requires a civil penalty payable to the state; and subd. 9(2) authorizes an order compelling the sale, lease, or rental of the housing itself. Subdivision 7 allows the prevailing party a reasonable attorney’s fee in the court’s discretion.
Housing discrimination frequently surfaces in the middle of something else — a nonrenewal, a rent dispute, an eviction. If that is your situation, see also Minnesota tenants and habitability and the eviction timeline. And where the discrimination happened in a business open to the public rather than in housing, the governing provision is Minn. Stat. § 363A.11.
Working with Madgett Law
Madgett Law, LLC handles civil rights litigation — including housing discrimination and fair housing claims — in Minnesota state and federal court, alongside the firm’s personal injury and general civil litigation practice. Housing cases reward early evidence: the text messages, the application, the advertisement, the name of the person who said it. If you believe you were refused housing, charged different terms, or pushed out because of who you are, you can send us a message or call 612-470-6529. No outcome is promised or implied.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 363A.09, subds. 1–6; § 363A.03, subds. 18, 24, 36a, 47, 50; § 363A.07, subd. 3; § 363A.21, subds. 1, 2; § 363A.28, subds. 1, 3(a); § 363A.33, subds. 1, 6, 7, 8(a), 9(2); § 549.20 (revisor.mn.gov, pulled directly rather than through a summarizer). 42 U.S.C. § 3603(b); § 3604(a), (b), (c)–(e), (f)(1)–(3); § 3613(a)(1)(A)–(B), (a)(2), (c)(1), (c)(2) (uscode.house.gov, current through Aug. 1, 2026). 24 C.F.R. § 100.500(a), (b)(2), (c)(1)–(3) (eCFR, title 24 current as of July 13, 2026). Texas Dep’t of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 576 U.S. 519, 521, 540 (2015).
This article is general information about Minnesota and federal law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and it does not promise or imply any particular outcome. Consult a lawyer about your own situation.