Second Circuit nominee recently asked SCOTUS to overrule its decision upholding core civil rights protection
Matthew Schwartz, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, also filed a brief in support of criminalizing homelessness.
On June 25, 2015, in a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the disparate impact standard under the Fair Housing Act — affirming a legal tool used for decades to combat housing discrimination. “The Court acknowledges the Fair Housing Act’s continuing role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society,” Justice Kennedy wrote in the opinion.
Civil rights and fair housing advocates celebrated the decision in Texas Dept. of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. — though it would soon come under attack. During the first Trump administration, the Ben Carson-led Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed eviscerating the Fair Housing Act’s protections, and the department finalized its rule in 2020. And while a federal court halted that rule, and while HUD under President Biden reinstated the previous Obama-era regulation, the second Trump administration has again proposed weakening fair housing discrimination protections. This follows an April 2025 executive order from Trump declaring, in part, that “It is the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible.”
Two days after Trump issued that executive order last April, Matthew Schwartz, a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP who was recently nominated to the Second Circuit, cited the executive order when he filed a petition of certiorari with the Supreme Court — “including on the ground that the Court should overrule the disparate impact doctrine under Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.,” according to his Senate questionnaire.
Schwartz’s work seeking to overturn this important Supreme Court decision is part of Saint-Jean v. Emigrant Mortgage Company — a case that began 15 years ago. The opposing counsel in the case are lawyers with Relman Colfax PLLC, a national civil rights law firm focused on protecting and enforcing civil rights statutes. As Relman Colfax explains:
The firm represented eight Black and Latino borrowers who had been exploited by Emigrant’s predatory loan program. Over the course of two trials, our lawyers presented significant evidence that Emigrant targeted Black and Latino families in New York with grossly unfavorable loans. The defendants’ practice of unfair and deceptive loans was a textbook example of reverse redlining—targeting minority communities with loans that were destined to fail, leaving borrowers and their families almost certain to lose their homes or face foreclosure proceedings.
Matthew Schwartz argued the appeal in this case before the Second Circuit — the court to which he has now been nominated. He lost. And in January 2026, the Supreme Court denied his cert petition, thus “ending a more than decade-long effort by Emigrant to escape accountability for predatory loans targeting homeowners of color,” as Relman Colfax put it.
HUD’s new proposal to gut disparate impact protections was published in the Federal Register two days after the Supreme Court said they wouldn’t hear Schwartz’s case that sought to overturn Justice Kennedy’s 2015 decision. Opponents of civil rights protections are working aggressively to accomplish this one way or another. Last July, Senator Mike Lee and Representative Brandon Gill introduced the so-called Restoring Equal Opportunity Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act to prohibit disparate impact claims (H.R. 4448 and S. 2343).
At the same time, as Schwartz’s nomination demonstrates, Trump continues to appoint lifetime federal judges with records of working against economic justice and issues of affordability, including the rights of consumers and working people. And the judges he appointed during his first term are doing real damage to the cost of living and consumer rights — compounding the impact of Trump’s disastrous economic policies.
According to his law firm page, Schwartz “has represented some of the world’s leading corporations, financial institutions, and industry organizations,” providing “regular advice on legislation and regulations in the AI, banking, FinTech, and payments fields.” This includes representing Tesla, Barclays, and Goldman Sachs.
Troublingly, he was also a member of his law firm’s team that authored an amicus brief in Grants Pass v. Johnson on behalf of Professor John F. Stinneford of Florida Levin College of Law. The brief, on which he is listed as the counsel of record, is cited in Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 2024 opinion criminalizing homelessness. According to the National Homelessness Law Center, the Court “decided that the US Constitution does not protect homeless people against cruel and unusual punishment, even when they have no choice to sleep in public using things like blankets or pillows.”
It is alarming that Schwartz has defended a mortgage company who engaged in reverse redlining, making communities of color more likely to lose their homes — and also supported efforts to criminalize people who don’t have a place to live.
Schwartz, who twice clerked for Justice Samuel Alito (both on the Third Circuit and at the Supreme Court), is the latest appellate court nominee who has represented Trump in his personal capacity. Schwartz is part of the legal team hired to work on Trump’s appeal of his criminal conviction in the Manhattan hush money case and is part of the team working to move the underlying case to federal court. Trump lawyers Emil Bove, who was confirmed last year to the Third Circuit, and Justin Smith, whose nomination to the Eighth Circuit is currently pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee, have also been rewarded for their loyalty to the president. Schwartz will likely appear before the committee for his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, May 13.