A view of the Supreme Court, Jan. 16, 2015 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew A…

A view of the Supreme Court, Jan. 16, 2015 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty) Roberts Court could cripple another key civil rights law The justices will hear a case Wednesday giving them a chance to significantly narrow the scope of the Fair Housing Act (FHA), which bars governments, lenders, landlords, realtors, and anyone else from discriminating on the basis of race or other criteria in housing. RELATED: Buying a home: The American dream that won’t die The FHA, passed in 1968 a week after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., isn’t lionized to the same degree as the Voting Rights Act or the Civil Rights Act. But, its supporters say, it’s an integral part of the panoply of civil rights legislation that transformed the country half a century ago. “The stakes are very high,” said John Relman, a lawyer representing the National Fair Housing Alliance. “Housing lies at the fulcrum of civil rights. Where you live affects the opportunities you have for jobs, better schools, connections that allow you to have opportunity in your life to advance. And if we cannot use the FHA to address the policies that affect and limit where we live, then our ability to protect all these civil rights—employment rights, rights to a fair and equal education—will be seriously undermined.” At issue in the case, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Community Project, Inc., is whether the FHA bars actions that have a discriminatory effect—what’s known as disparate impact—or only those that are deliberately discriminatory. If the court were to rule that disparate impact claims aren’t covered under the FHA, it would badly weaken the law, because, these days, very few people blatantly advertise their racial prejudice, so proving intentional discrimination is extremely difficult. Under disparate impact, plaintiffs have to do more than show that the actions they’re challenging had a harmful result on minorities. They also have to show that there was an alternative method that could have been used to achieve the same goal, with a less discriminatory result. That’s still a pretty high bar to meet, civil rights advocates say. The Inclusive Community Project argues that Texas was approving tax credits for low-income housing only in heavily African-American neighborhoods of Dallas, and denying tax credits in white neighborhoods. That approach, they say, has prolonged the city’s racial segregation, making it harder for poor blacks to have a shot at upward mobility. Texas has responded not by denying that it takes that approach but by arguing that since the discrimination isn’t intentional—it says it’s just trying to comply with federal mandates governing the use of tax credits—it’s not covered under the FHA. In its brief urging the Supreme Court to take the case, it noted that Congress included specific language in other laws—Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act—to show that it wanted to cover disparate impact. That language is missing from the FHA.