We just found out late this evening that the appeal of Seattle’s First in Time rule — a requirement that a landlord rent to the first person shows up — was overturned. I haven’t had time to fully digest all the elements of the ruling but the language is very favorable. It was a breathtaking act of malpractice to pass this  measure in the first place. The Council acted based on anecdote. Someone heard or saw that a landlord somewhere was offering discounts to people who worked at Amazon. The Stranger, of course, hyped the story. The Council snapped into action. Their solution: the first person who shows up gets the apartment. And of course, this solves absolutely nothing and creates a huge risk for landlords and creates paperwork and a new protected class: the first person that shows up. Not the poorest, or neediest, or the best, but the first. The Council can ignore logic and economics and The Stranger can beat its drum, but you can’t ignore the Constitution.

I pick this final piece of language in the ruling because it is so decisive. The Court acknowledges that discrimination is bad and that renting is hard for many people. But it slaps this solution down as overreaching. Among other things their “solution” is a sledgehammer, restricting speech, and “valuable speech activities like case-by-case negotiation.” Exactly. The whole idea of discretion for landlords is to give them room to mitigate risks of renting their private property. That’s the other issue: the law unconstitutionally prohibits the use of property by mandating who it can be rented to.

It is worth reading the Superior Court ruling in its entirety. I’ll be writing more about this later. But right now I am enjoying the win. Big thanks to the Rental Housing Association and the Pacific Legal Foundation who made this happen by standing up to the City Councils irresponsible behavior.