Green

When George and Elizabeth Green went to a mortgage broker to obtain a loan for the new $440,000 house they wanted to buy in Coto de Caza, they had a monthly income in excess of $16,000, more than $50,000 in savings, and six pieces of real property with a net value of $290,000. Their debts (exclusive of encumbrances on their real property) were less than $35,000, and over 70 percent of that represented car loans. Despite the fact that there were lenders willing to make the Greens a loan, the lending officer at the mortgage broker told Elizabeth Green that she could not find “a lender” who would accept them, and then later changed her records to suggest that she only said she could not find “an A lender” (meaning a high quality lender, as distinct from a “B” lender of lower quality).

The Greens are Black. As explained below, the circumstances of this case give rise to an inference that the mortgage broker failed to obtain a loan for them because of their race. The mortgage broker’s explanation was that the Greens were simply unqualified to obtain the kind of loan they sought. But this explanation could only hold water if the Greens had restricted the broker’s search to “A”…