Meehan v. Welfare Commissioner

1 Citing case

  1. Commission on Human Rights and Opp. v. Sullivan Assoc

    250 Conn. 763 (Conn. 1999)   Cited 71 times
    Concluding that " ‘insufficient income’ " exception to Fair Housing Act under General Statutes § 46a-64c (b) does not categorically exclude tenants receiving section 8 assistance but, instead, receives " narrow construction ... affords a landlord an opportunity to determine whether, presumably for reasons extrinsic to the section 8 housing assistance calculations, a potential tenant lacks sufficient income to give the landlord reasonable assurance that the tenant's portion of the stipulated rental will be paid promptly and that the tenant will undertake to meet the other obligations implied in the tenancy"

    Although we usually have given weight to legislative inaction following a judicial construction of a statute, on occasion we also have noted the significance of legislative inaction following an administrative construction of a statute. See Hansen v. Gordon, 221 Conn. 29, 36, 602 A.2d 560 (1992) (worker's compensation review division's interpretation); Connecticut Light Power Co. v. Public Utilities Control Authority, 176 Conn. 191, 198, 405 A.2d 638 (1978) (public utilities control authority); Housing Authority v. Dorsey, 164 Conn. 247, 253, 320 A.2d 820, cert. denied, 414 U.S. 1043, 94 S.Ct. 548, 38 L.Ed.2d 335 (1973) (attorney general); see also Cummings v. Twin Mfg., Inc., 29 Conn. App. 249, 256, 614 A.2d 857 (1992) (compensation review division); Meehan v. Welfare Commissioner, 34 Conn. Sup. 524, 526, 373 A.2d 1212 (1976) (congressional acquiescence in administrative interpretation of regulation; two years of congressional silence sufficient to indicate acquiescence). In sum, for all the reasons discussed, we conclude that the legislature, in requiring landlords to make rental housing available to potential tenants relying on section 8 housing assistance, intended thereby to require landlords to use section 8 leases.