Lansing, Michigan – Michigan’s ability to enforce its own fair housing protections will remain intact after a multistate legal challenge forced the Trump administration to abandon disputed conditions tied to federal housing enforcement funding.
The reversal gives Michigan and other participating jurisdictions certainty that federal money under the Fair Housing Assistance Program, or FHAP, will not be conditioned on restrictions that attorneys general argued could weaken enforcement of state and local anti-discrimination laws.
Attorney General Dana Nessel announced that Michigan and a coalition of 16 attorneys general secured the outcome after suing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development earlier this year. The coalition filed its lawsuit in March 2026 over conditions included in HUD’s Fiscal Year 2025 FHAP Funding Guidance.
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FHAP provides federal funding to state and local agencies responsible for enforcing fair housing laws. In Michigan, those protections help residents challenge housing discrimination.
The states argued that HUD’s guidance could have limited how agencies handled certain complaints and restricted reimbursement for some enforcement work. They also challenged provisions that could have threatened agencies enforcing protections that go beyond requirements contained in federal law.
The dispute has now ended without those conditions taking effect going forward. According to a letter from HUD, the department confirmed that the Fiscal Year 2025 guidance is no longer in effect and that it will not seek to impose, implement or enforce the challenged requirements.
HUD also confirmed that the conditions will not apply to Fiscal Year 2026 FHAP funding and said it does not plan to include them in future funding guidance.
With those assurances in place, the parties agreed to dismiss the lawsuit.
“Once again, our lawsuit has caused the Trump administration to rescind its imposition of unlawful conditions on critical funding, this time on a vital fair housing program,” said Attorney General Nessel.
“It proves that actions challenging the federal government’s illegal activities work and only strengthens my commitment to protecting Michigan residents and holding this administration accountable when it bypasses the rule of law.”
Michigan was joined by attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.