HUD Rescinded Its Criminal-Screening Guidance—Now What? Arrests, Blanket Bans, Lookback Periods, and Fair Chance Laws

On November 25, 2025, HUD Secretary Scott Turner sent shockwaves through the multihousing industry with a letter rescinding three of the agency’s most influential guidance documents on criminal-history screening, including the 2015 notice that discouraged excluding applicants based on arrest records alone, and the 2016 and 2022 memos that warned blanket criminal-history bans could trigger Fair Housing Act disparate impact liability.

For property management teams, the headlines have made this sound like a green light: screen however you want, the federal guardrails are gone. That read is incomplete, and acting on it without a closer look could expose your organization to real risk.

Here’s what the rescission actually does: it removes HUD’s prior “safe harbor” interpretation for HUD-assisted housing. Here’s what it does not do: eliminate your exposure to Fair Housing Act claims, override state and local fair chance housing laws, or change your obligations if you operate in a jurisdiction like New York City or Seattle with independent lookback-period and individualized-assessment requirements. HUD itself has said plainly that this notice does not require denying applicants based on arrest records and does not shield owners from discrimination charges tied to how they use this new discretion.

This session is built to cut through the noise and give your team a clear, current picture of where things actually stand — and what to do about it before your next policy revision. We’ll walk through exactly which documents were rescinded and why, what remains legally binding regardless of the rescission, and how to evaluate blanket bans and lookback periods against real risk rather than headlines. We’ll map the patchwork of fair chance housing laws still very much in force at the state and local level, and we’ll give you a documentation framework so that whatever criteria your organization lands on, you can defend it.

Webinar Agenda

In this session, we’ll cover:

• What HUD’s November 2025 letter rescinded, and what legal weight, if any that carries
• Why rescinded federal guidance does not equal eliminated liability under the Fair Housing Act
• How blanket bans and lookback periods should be evaluated in this new landscape
• Which fair chance housing laws remain in effect regardless of federal posture, and where they’re expanding
• A practical framework for revising and documenting your screening policy defensibly
• What to watch for next as this area continues to shift

Federal policy in this space has moved fast, and it’s likely to keep moving. The organizations that get this right will treat the rescission as an invitation to review their policies carefully and document their reasoning, not as permission to stop thinking about fair housing risk. The organizations that misread the headlines may find themselves exposed at the state or local level even while believing they’re covered.

Session Objectives

By the conclusion of this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Identify exactly which HUD guidance documents were rescinded on November 25, 2025, and what legal effect that rescission does — and does not — have.
• Distinguish between federal HUD-assisted housing screening obligations and conventional (non-HUD-assisted) property screening practices.
• Recognize that rescinding federal guidance does not eliminate Fair Housing Act disparate impact exposure at the state and local level.
• Evaluate current blanket-ban and lookback-period policies against remaining legal risk, even where HUD’s prior “safe harbor” language no longer applies.
• Map fair chance housing laws (e.g., NYC Local Law 24, Seattle) that restrict when and how criminal history may be used, regardless of federal posture.
• Apply an updated screening decision framework that accounts for arrest records, conviction records, and lookback periods post-rescission.
• Develop a defensible, documented rationale for any revised screening criteria your organization adopts in response to this change.

Session Highlights

• HUD’s November 25, 2025 letter rescinded Notice PIH 2015-19, the 2016 OGC Guidance, and the 2022 FHEO Memo but this applies to HUD-assisted housing screening standards, not a blanket authorization for all housing providers everywhere.
• Rescission removes a prior “safe harbor”however it does not insulate any property from Fair Housing Act disparate impact claims tied to criminal-history policies.
• HUD has explicitly stated this action does not require denials based on arrest records and does not eliminate liability for discriminatory outcomes.
• State and local fair chance laws (NYC, Seattle, and others) remain fully in effect and often impose stricter limits than anything HUD ever required.
• This is part of a broader federal shift and HUD has also deprioritized disparate impact enforcement generally, but courts and state agencies have not made the same shift.
• Blanket bans on applicants with any criminal history remain one of the highest-risk policies you can maintain, rescission or not.
• Now is the time to document your rationale for any policy change, not to assume permission has been granted to skip documentation altogether.