CHICAGO (LN) — A federal judge refused Monday to throw out a Fair Housing Act lawsuit brought by Steve Boykin, a T7 paraplegic who uses a wheelchair, against the developers, constructors, owners, and operators of The Lydian, a Chicago apartment complex, ruling that Boykin's firsthand encounter with accessibility barriers — and the stigmatization and emotional distress that followed — constitutes a concrete injury under Article III.
U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis denied the motion to dismiss filed by Marquette Management, Inc., Damen Lot 2 Properties REIT, LLC, Power Construction Company, LLC, Brininstool + Lynch, Ltd., Eriksson Engineering Associates, Ltd., and Cullen Development Group, LLC, all of whom were involved in designing, building, or operating The Lydian at 513 S. Damen Avenue, which opened in January 2023.
Boykin, who suffered a spinal injury in 1985, toured one or more units at the 279-unit complex in 2024 and catalogued close to twenty alleged FHA violations. Among them: a bathroom where an architectural barrier created insufficient room for a centered side approach and no forward approach was available due to the failure to install removable base cabinets, inadequate floor space near the shower and tub area, thermostats installed too high for a wheelchair user, and kitchen countertops higher than thirty-four inches above the finished floor.
The defendants leaned heavily on the Supreme Court's 2021 decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, arguing it tightened the standing rules for tester plaintiffs and required more than a bare statutory violation. Ellis agreed with that much — but not with where it left Boykin.
Ellis wrote that the Court agrees with Defendants that TransUnion requires Boykin to plead more than a mere statutory violation as testers have historically pleaded, but that the Court disagrees that Boykin failed to satisfy this requirement.
The key distinction Ellis drew was between plaintiffs who allege only a statutory violation and those who allege a physical encounter with discriminatory barriers. Boykin, she held, did the latter. He alleged that he encountered and experienced accessibility barriers that would interfere with his ability to access and use the facilities and that defendants' conduct caused him to feel stigmatized and to experience frustration, indignation, and emotional distress — intangible harms the Supreme Court has recognized as potentially concrete under Article III.
Ellis also distinguished a line of cases the defendants cited, including the Supreme Court's Acheson Hotels decision and several circuit rulings, noting that those plaintiffs never visited the properties at issue and never encountered any discriminatory barrier in person. Boykin did both.
On redressability, Ellis rejected the defendants' argument that Boykin had no intention of returning to The Lydian. His third amended complaint alleged that he expects to return once defendants remediate the accessibility issues and that he is currently in the market for an apartment in the area — allegations Ellis accepted as true at the pleading stage.
Ellis was careful to flag that the ruling is not the end of the road for the defendants. Discovery, she noted, will help the parties to establish or disprove Boykin's allegations of frustration, physical difficulty, indignation, and emotional distress — and those allegations, she acknowledged, may not survive summary judgment.
Boykin has filed three other substantively similar FHA suits in the Northern District of Illinois within a six-month period, targeting GS Aberdeen Owner, LLC, 160 North Elizabeth Holdings, LLC, and The 808 Development, LLC.