A proposed Fair Housing Act analysis: when actual knowledge of a compulsive ingestion disorder meets actual knowledge of pre-existing environmental ingestion hazards in rental housing.
There is no separate PDF file on the server. Use Print → Save as PDF above for a one-page handout (tighten margins in the print dialog if needed).
The theory argues that when all three are present, the landlord may have a duty to disclose known hazards or remediate before rental — not an ordinary pest issue for all tenants, but a disability-specific interaction the landlord knew about.
42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(2) — It is unlawful to discriminate in the terms, conditions, or privileges of rental because of disability (including associated persons). The theory frames knowing placement into a hazard the landlord understood as disability-specific as a discriminatory condition of the tenancy when knowledge and foreseeability are proven.
No published federal decision is known to apply this FHA disability structure to Pica placement in known infested housing. That gap is a litigation opportunity and a reason careful citation and record-building matter. A related Fair Housing Act case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona; the court has not ruled on this theory. Caption and CM/ECF identifiers are not on this public one-pager. The household includes children on the autism spectrum; Pica is the ingestion disability emphasized in this framework for one child — granular identifying detail stays in materials for counsel and verified press.
NIH SEED analysis, Fields et al., 2021, Pediatrics — primary citation for U.S. prevalence comparisons:
The same structure is argued to apply to other ingestion hazards (e.g., lead paint debris, rodent waste, mold- or moisture-damaged surfaces) when both knowledge elements and the disability-specific interaction are present.