The Denver Metro Fair Housing Center has sued Bellco Credit Union in federal court claiming that its policy of denying home mortgage loans to women on maternity leave is discriminatory.
The lawsuit filed in Denver U.S. District Court says that Bellco denies home loans regardless of whether the maternity leave is paid and without considering the financial wherewithal of the applicant.
“Bellco’s policy discriminates based on sex and familial status,” the lawsuit filed in March by Washington, D.C. attorneys Jamie Crook and Glenn Schlactus and Denver civil rights attorney Amy Robertson.
The lawsuit seeks a declaration that Bellco’s policy violates the federal Fair Housing Act and the Colorado Fair Housing Act. The Housing Center, a non-profit housing advocacy group, seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
Bellco released a statement Tuesday in response to the lawsuit saying that it is a non-profit financial cooperative that has never knowingly engaged in any discriminatory lending practice of any kind.
“Bellco policy forbids any kind of discrimination based on the sex or familial status of applicants, including pregnancy and maternity leave,” the statement says. “We believe the allegations in the suit could have been addressed between our two not-for profit companies directly instead of through a lawsuit where valuable resources are being spent on attorneys and court costs.”
The statement says that Bellco’s attorneys are investigating the allegations and will respond to them in court, “but we are confident that the lawsuit has no merit.”
In 2016, Housing Center staff set about to determine whether any banks were discriminating against women on maternity leave including Bellco, a “high-volume” lender that has more than 20 branches in Colorado.
Bellco’s policy requires that a mother return to work for at least 30 days before it will consider her loan application, the lawsuit says.
The non-profit did five telephone tests with the help of people with a strong credit score in the mid-700s and two income earners.
During the test calls, a Bellco employee told one applicant that she would first need to provide a month’s worth of pay stubs to “make sure that you do return to work and at the same pay. The employee further said that Bellco would not consider income earned during maternity leave because it was not “regular income” or “expected to continue through the future,” the lawsuit says.
Another Bellco employee told a different tester claiming to be on maternity leave that the company could not consider her income during the loan application because ” a lot of people say they are going to go back to work then they don’t.”
Another tester said she had $72,000 in savings, but was told she still had to submit pay stubs for a month following her return to work, the lawsuit says.
“As early as 2010, HUD announced that it was unlawful for mortgage lenders to refuse to lend to expectant mothers or those on maternity leave,” the lawsuit says.
