Today, CCL filed briefs opposing motions to dismiss in two cases filed by the City of Miami Gardens, Fla. against Bank of America and Chase that accused the banks of discriminatory mortgage lending practices under the Fair Housing Act.

      The cases, pending for seven years, recently were reactivated after similar cases' appeals had run their course. The banks filed motions to dismiss, claiming the city lacks Article III standing, failed to meet the statute of limitations, failed to sufficiently allege proximate cause because the city's lost property tax revenue was too remote from the discriminatory mortgages to be actionable.

      In response the city's brief, largely written by CCL, argued that the city met the criteria for constitutional standing, alleged a continuing violation that allows relation back to earlier discriminatory loans because it identified more than one similar loan within the two-year period before the original complaint was filed, and met the standard for proximate cause because of the regression analysis it alleged, which every court to date has found sufficient.

     The banks will now have an opportunity to reply to the brief.