In City of Oakland v. Wells Fargo & Co., federal district court judge Edward Chen denied Wells Fargo's motion to dismiss the City of Oakland's fair housing complaint against the banking giant for a pattern of discrimination in mortgage loans given to minority home buyers. CCL President Robert S. Peck represented Oakland in the argument last December and wrote the principle section of the brief.

     Oakland raised similar allegations against Wells Fargo as did Miami, also represented by Peck in the U.S. Supreme Court last term. In Bank of America v. City of Miami, the Supreme Court held, 5-3, that cities have standing to bring fair housing actions for lost property taxes, remediation expenses, and depletion of its fair housing resources, but asked the lower courts to determine, in the first instance, the contours of the Fair Housing Act's proximate cause requirement at the pleading stage. The Miami case was returned to the Eleventh Circuit for that determination and received simultaneous briefing from the parties (Miami, Bank of America and Wells Fargo) on April 30.

     In the Oakland case, Judge Chen held that the city had sufficiently pleaded a direct connection between its lost property taxes and the Bank's allegedly discriminatory practices. He also found the city's claim for injunctive relieve satisfied the relevant proximate cause standard. Its claim for damages for its monetary expenditures was dismissed without prejudice so that it could be re-pleaded to specify the expenditures attributable to Wells Fargo. The court also dismissed without prejudice for re-filing the city's claim for harm to its goal and programs advancing fair housing. 

    When the Supreme Court handed down its decision last term, both sides claimed victory. To date, CCL has prevailed on the proximate cause issue in each of the cases in which it represents a city bringing a fair housing case.