The document itself

The operative document is a memorandum dated August 31, 2026 from Craig W. Trainor, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, to FHEO headquarters, enforcement and regional staff, titled "The Statute of Limitations Under the Fair Housing Act as Applied to Design and Construction Cases." HUD publicised it in a press release the following day, September 1.

The memorandum makes one central change. HUD will treat noncompliance with the Fair Housing Act's design-and-construction accessibility requirements, at 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(C), as a discrete violation rather than a continuing one. The one-year administrative limitations period therefore begins on issuance of the initial certificate of occupancy, not on later discovery of the defect. It took effect immediately on issuance.

That reverses the interpretation in the 2013 HUD-DOJ Joint Statement, which had allowed complaints to be filed at any time until a violation was corrected. HUD and the Department of Justice rescinded the inconsistent portions of that Joint Statement on August 13, 2026, ahead of the memorandum.

The reasoning HUD relies on

The memorandum cites the original 1968 Fair Housing Act's 180-day administrative limitations period, extended to one year by the Fair Housing Amendments Act at 42 U.S.C. § 3610(a)(1)(A)(i), and the separate two-year period for private lawsuits at § 3613(a)(1)(A), which runs from the occurrence or termination of a discriminatory housing practice.

Its principal authority is a Ninth Circuit en banc decision holding that a design-and-construction violation terminates when construction is completed, with the certificate of occupancy marking that completion. The memorandum acknowledges disagreement among the appellate courts, noting an unpublished opinion from another circuit; the full citation for that second case was not verified for this article and is not stated here.

It also invokes the interpretive canon against reading a statute so as to render provisions inoperative or superfluous, citing Corley v. United States, 556 U.S. 303 (2009) — the argument being that a continuing-violation theory would drain the limitations periods Congress wrote of any effect.

What is unchanged

The substantive standard is untouched. Covered multifamily dwellings — all units in buildings with an elevator and four or more units, plus ground-floor units in non-elevator buildings with four or more units, built after March 13, 1991 under 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(7) — must still be designed and built to the Act's accessibility requirements.

The memorandum also leaves intact the 2006 HUD administrative decision in HUD v. Nelson on the presumption of inaccessibility arising from design deviations. Only the limitations theory changes.

Analysis: the practical effect is asymmetric between new and old buildings. For a building opening next year, a one-year clock from the certificate of occupancy is a workable window. For a building completed in 2005 with non-compliant bathrooms, the administrative route closes entirely — and it is precisely in older stock that unremedied violations accumulate, because no one inspects a finished building for 1991 compliance unless a resident complains.

The cost figure, and the limits of guidance

HUD's press release asserts that more than $110 million in repair costs were imposed on building owners under the prior guidance over the last five years, regardless of whether those owners contributed to any alleged violation. That figure appears in the department's release rather than in the memorandum itself; it is an agency assertion, not a court-verified total, and the release does not itemize how the sum was calculated.

Agency guidance is also not law. Courts interpreting the Fair Housing Act's limitations periods are not bound by HUD's reading, and the memorandum itself concedes an appellate split. Private suits under § 3613, with their separate two-year period, are governed by the courts rather than by FHEO's enforcement posture.