Championing Housing Justice

Advocates Champion Housing Justice for Communities of Color in Supreme Judicial Court

Brief Filed Supporting Attorney General’s Enforcement of MBTA Communities Law in Milton

Attorneys from Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) and Brown Rudnick LLP filed a friend-of-the-court brief before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in the Attorney General’s lawsuit against the Town of Milton to enforce the MBTA Communities Law. The brief was filed on behalf of Commonwealth-based organizations that advocate for racial and ethnic justice or provide housing services to low-income communities. The signatories are the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance, the Greater Boston Latino Network, Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, Haitian-Americans United, and Immigrant Family Services Institute.

The brief builds on LCR’s sustained advocacy around the MBTA Communities Law, which has been ongoing since 2022. This includes efforts to educate the public about the zoning mandate’s importance and a groundbreaking lawsuit—also filed by LCR and Brown Rudnick—against the Town of Holden for openly defying the law. 

In the latest brief, LCR and Brown Rudnick are representing community organizations to provide the Supreme Judicial Court with an important racial justice perspective. 

The brief supports the Attorney General’s position that the state’s zoning mandate is mandatory for all 177 communities it covers, including Holden and Milton. Full compliance with the mandate is critical to alleviating the housing affordability crisis in Massachusetts, which disproportionately harms communities of color, and ending the Commonwealth’s entrenched patterns of racial segregation.

The brief is available here: