Earlier this month a group of tenants and landlords in Seattle, Washington teamed up with the Institute for Justice to file a class action lawsuit against the city for its use of invasive, warrantless searches to inspect rental units. According to a recent article in the Rental Housing Journal, the lawsuit doesn’t seek to stop the city from inspecting rental units (where the tenants agree to the inspection) or keep the city from addressing problem properties. It does, however, want the city to stop entering private homes of Seattle’s renters without consent or a legally obtained warrant that is based on evidence of a specific problem or issue. Indeed…
“By subjecting tenants to random, government-mandated inspections that would not occur if that same person owned their home, Seattle is treating renters like second-class citizens,” said William Maurer, the managing attorney of the Institute for Justice’s Washington state office. “Your home is your castle, regardless of whether you rent or own it. It is plainly unconstitutional for Seattle to force renters to open up their homes to government inspectors when nothing is wrong inside.”
Click here to read the full story at Rental Housing Journal.
Click here to read the full release at the Institute for Justice.