A condo unit owner and her prospective tenant are claiming that the Boca View Condominium Association, its president and its management company violated their civil rights by denying the nurse’s rental application in 2020 because she might have been exposed to COVID patients.
A lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach claims that Diana Kuka, the association’s president, blocked a rental application submitted by unit owner Greta Tremmel for Jennifer Piraino, an intensive care unit nurse, because Piraino worked with COVID-19 patients.
The suit was filed despite the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s determination last fall that it did not find evidence to support allegations made in 2020 by Tremmel and Piraino that the association violated the Fair Housing Act.
The new suit states that because she works with COVID-19 patients, Piraino is “regarded as” a person with a “handicap” under the Act, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities, and that Tremmel, because of her association with Piraino, is covered under the same laws.
“During times of crisis, it is essential to support our first responder heroes who give their all on a daily basis,” said Matt Dietz, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad College of Law, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Tremmel and Piraino. “It is unlawful to refuse housing based upon that important job to care for those in need.”
The lawsuit claims that after Tremmel submitted Piraino’s rental application to the condo’s management office on April 24, 2020, Kuka called Tremmel and said that she did not want nurses moving into the building, the lawsuit states.
The suit further contends that a maintenance manager later that day told two prospective renters that Piraino would likely not be approved because “she’s a nurse and the board is concerned about her infecting the building.”
Three days later, an employee of the management office told Piraino that the office was not processing her application “because of everything going on in the world,” the lawsuit said. Despite repeatedly contacting the board via email, letters, “and even protests outside the building,” the plaintiffs received no explanation for the rejection of the rental application, the suit said.
The governing board of Boca View, a 72-unit complex located at 1000 Spanish River Blvd., has in recent years been involved in several civil cases against unit owners. In 2022, it lost a lawsuit seeking to overturn an arbitrator’s finding that it failed to allow a unit owner’s personal representative to inspect the association’s financial documents.
Members of the condo’s governing board maintained it had the right to block the inspection because the owner who made the request was working on behalf of a couple who had previously lost their rights under the condo’s declaration to inspect documents.
In 2022, the board was sued over the Piraino matter by the U.S. Department of Justice, which alleged the board did not respond to requests for information sought by investigators for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, who looked into the complaint filed by Tremmel.
The association, management company and the attorney who represented the parties in the Department of Justice lawsuit did not respond to requests for comment about the new lawsuit.
The condo board filed motions to quash HUD’s subpoenas, arguing that Tremmel had no standing to file her complaint because she was not a member of a protected class nor a person with a disability.
Ultimately, the board complied with a court order to produce documents requested by HUD, a court filing shows.
Dietz told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday that the HUD investigators closed their investigation in September after finding no evidence that discrimination took place.
A letter of determination provided to the South Florida Sun Sentinel by Dietz stated that the association told HUD’s investigators that it stopped accepting any rental or purchase applications for about a month at the beginning of the pandemic.
The plaintiffs had cited, as evidence of their discrimination claim, two applications submitted by others at around the same time that Piraino’s was rejected. One application sought association approval for a condo unit sale and the other was for a proposed rental. But the HUD investigators found that the sale was approved before the moratorium went into effect and the rental agreement “never came to fruition,” the HUD finding said.
However, HUD’s letter of determination stated that its finding did not prevent Tremmel and Piraino from pursuing their own lawsuits.
Kuka and the maintenance manager denied stating that Kuka did not want nurses in the building, the HUD investigators said. In addition, the letter said they found an owner who identified as an emergency room nurse living in the complex.
Dietz said his clients don’t believe the association’s claim to the HUD investigators that it rejected Piraino’s rental application while a monthlong moratorium was in place. The association, he said, “provided no documentation for that rule or (identifying) any other person who applied and was rejected.”
He said the plaintiffs intend to prove that “the reason provided by the defendant is a pretext for the discriminatory motive.”
Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071 or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.