Familial Status Discrimination: Your Rights and the 55+ Exemption, Explained

Under the Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. § 3602(k)), familial status protection covers a household with one or more individuals under 18 domiciled with a parent or legal custodian (or their written-permission designee), and it explicitly extends the same protection to any pregnant person and to anyone in the process of securing legal custody of a minor, such as an ongoing adoption or foster placement. This means "adults only," "no children," and "perfect for a couple/young professionals" policies or advertising are illegal outside one specific, narrow exemption — and refusing a pregnant applicant is treated exactly the same as refusing a family with a child already living with them.

The one real carve-out is the "housing for older persons" exemption (42 U.S.C. § 3607(b); 24 CFR Part 100, Subpart E), which comes in two forms: housing intended for and solely occupied by persons 62 or older, or "55 or older" housing that meets three specific conditions — at least 80% of occupied units have at least one resident 55 or older, the community publishes and actually follows policies demonstrating its intent to be 55+ housing, and it complies with HUD’s age-verification rules for residents. A building that doesn’t actually meet all three conditions does not qualify for the exemption no matter what it calls itself — and misapplying this exemption is a genuine, recurring source of real fair-housing disputes, not a hypothetical one.

Landlords also sometimes use occupancy limits as a pretext to exclude families with children. HUD’s long-standing guidance (originating in a 1991 memo, adopted by HUD in 1998, commonly called the "Keating Memo") treats a standard of two persons per bedroom as generally reasonable — but explicitly as a rebuttable presumption, not an absolute rule. A landlord can still be liable for discrimination if a stricter standard is applied without justification, or if the same 2-per-bedroom figure is enforced in a way that ignores unit size, room configuration, or ages of the children involved.

Cases where a "55 and older" or "62 and older" restriction is challenged for not actually meeting the exemption’s requirements (insufficient senior occupancy, no documented policy, no age verification) are a genuine, recurring dispute type — not a rare edge case — and can result in the restriction being struck down along with damages to affected applicants or residents.

Occupancy-limit disputes often turn on whether the landlord can justify a standard stricter than the general 2-per-bedroom presumption; HUD’s guidance gives you a strong starting point but doesn’t guarantee a specific outcome, since unit size and configuration matter too.

This page can help you understand your rights and the mechanics of the exemption, but it cannot predict how a specific HUD investigation or court will rule on your facts.