Managing Discriminatory Restrictive Covenants in All 50 States
Discriminatory restrictive covenants are something we talk about more than usual in this blog for a type of clause that hasn’t been enforceable in 75 years, but increased awareness, legislation, and community pressure have brought these vestiges of prejudice back to the forefront of public consciousness.
The University of Minnesota’s ‘Mapping Prejudice’ project is one of these groups trying to get a handle on the discriminatory covenants that still exist within our land records. Truly a pioneer in this area, Mapping Prejudice began back in 2016 to highlight some of the historical injustices that have led to present-day inequalities. Minnesota has large racial disparities in its housing and the project was also highlighted by the media in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in an attempt to understand the racial environment of the Twin Cities.
Other universities have joined the cause in mapping regional discriminatory covenants as well including the University of Washington, which received funding to map discriminatory restrictive covenants and alert homeowners of their presence. Virginia Tech received funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to help map discriminatory covenants in and around Chicago.
Other groups taking on this challenge include Lake Forest College, also working around Chicago, The University of Nebraska, and even individuals within county land records offices like in Wake County, North Carolina.
Amidst discussion around these covenants, the state of California’s Assembly Bill 1466 kicked land records modifications into high gear, requiring its counties to create restrictive covenant modification programs to redact the offending language. While other states are currently enacting laws allowing for repudiation of covenants discovered by citizens, California counties are going back through all of their land records to find and redact these covenants.
To be clear, discriminatory restrictive covenants aren’t legal in the United States at all, but states are taking varying approaches when it comes to how to reckon with these clauses. For now, California is the only state that is going to proactively remove these covenants, but some states will notify homeowners if a clause is in their deeds, others allow for owners to submit a modification request, a handful won’t record deeds with these covenants, and some just rely on federal law.
For the most part, this means it will be up to homeowners and buyers to look for these discriminatory covenants and submit a form to remove them or repudiate them, if anything. Mapping projects at universities are a great way of discovering where these clauses live but will take time as they largely operate with volunteer help.
To be able to identify and redact restrictive covenants across the tens of millions of pages of history that a county in California might have, recorders are turning to automation. Extract’s automated redaction software ID Shield can identify and permanently remove this language instantaneously. We’ve worked in tandem with both California counties and others that want to remove this text without a legal mandate to eliminate common false positives (identifying language that says “only white persons” or something similar while not flagging a common name like “Mike White”), perfect exchanges with legal departments, and turbocharge an arduous process.
A breakdown of current state laws and actions regarding discriminatory restrictive covenants can be found below, but if you’re a recorder, researcher, or legislator that would like to see how automated redaction can make your restrictive covenant modification process hassle-free, please take a look at our solution or reach out for a personalized consultation or demonstration.
