Two things make a screening decision hold up. It was made the same way for every applicant, and the standard it was measured against existed in writing before the applicant did.
The second one is free, so do it today. One page: minimum income, credit floor, rental history, what disqualifies an application outright, and how a tie between two qualified applicants gets broken. Attach it to the listing. Hand it to anyone who asks for it.
Everything below is how to make that page say the right things.
The seven federal protected classes, and the ones your state added
The Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to refuse to rent, or to otherwise make a dwelling unavailable, because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin (42 U.S.C. § 3604(a)). Disability sits in subsection (f), which goes further than a bare prohibition: it treats a refusal to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services as discrimination when the accommodation is necessary to give a person with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.
Seven classes federally. Most states add to the list, and a few add a lot.
California’s runs to sixteen. Race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, ancestry, familial status, source of income, disability, veteran or military status, and genetic information (Cal. Gov. Code § 12955(a)).
Source of income is the one that catches landlords who have not read their own state’s list in a few years. California defines it as lawful, verifiable income paid to the tenant, to a representative of the tenant, or to the landlord on the tenant’s behalf, and says in plain terms that it includes Section 8 housing choice vouchers (§ 12955(p)). Subsection (o) adds the part that changes the arithmetic: where a government rent subsidy is involved, the income standard has to be based on the portion of the rent the tenant actually pays, not on the full contract rent.
So a blanket three-times-the-rent rule applied to a voucher holder in California is a problem even if it is applied to everyone. Look up your own state’s list before you write the page. The federal seven is a floor, never the whole answer.
Write your screening criteria down before you take an application
Six lines is usually enough. Each one has to be a number or a yes/no, not a judgment call.
- Minimum household income, as a multiple of rent, with the subsidy carve-out your state requires. Write which documents you accept as proof.
- Minimum credit score, or the alternative you accept from an applicant with no score at all. Thin-file applicants exist and a policy that has no answer for them is a policy that gets improvised.
- Rental history: how many years, how many landlord references you will verify, and what you do when an applicant is a first-time renter.
- Automatic declines, listed. An unpaid judgment from a prior landlord and an eviction filed within a stated window are the two most landlords use.
- The order applications get considered. First complete application, first considered, is the simplest rule and the easiest to prove.
- What a complete application contains, so nobody is declined for a missing document they were never asked for.
Publish the page. There is no legal requirement in most places to hand it out, and doing it anyway does two useful things: it filters out applicants who already know they do not qualify, and it makes the standard impossible to characterize later as invented after the fact. A blank rental application form is a reasonable place to attach it.
Tell a real criterion from a protected class proxy
A criterion earns its place when it measures whether this applicant can pay the rent and keep the lease. It fails when it measures something about who the applicant is.
The obvious ones are easy. “No kids,” “adults preferred,” “quiet professionals only,” “must speak English,” “no vouchers” in a state where source of income is protected: those are not close calls, and § 3604(c) reaches the advertisement as well as the decision. Wording a listing that way is a violation whether or not anyone was ever turned down.
The harder ones look neutral on the page.
- Occupancy limits. Two people per bedroom is a common standard and a fair one. One person per bedroom is a familial status problem wearing a number.
- Employment type. “Full-time W-2 employment only” excludes self-employed applicants, retirees, and people whose income is a disability benefit. Measure income and its stability instead. See how to verify tenant income and employment.
- Length of residence in the area. A local-tenants-only rule is a national origin problem in a lot of markets.
- Blanket criminal history bans. Federal guidance in this area changed in November 2025 and state and local fair chance ordinances did not. The tenant screening checklist every landlord needs covers where a criminal history check fits into the rest of the process.
There is a second layer under the obvious one. A neutral criterion applied evenly can still be unlawful under the discriminatory effect standard at 24 C.F.R. § 100.500 if it produces a disparate impact on a protected class, is not necessary to a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest, and could have been served by an alternative with less discriminatory effect. That is a three-step burden, not a trap: the point is that a criterion should be able to explain what risk it is actually measuring. If the honest answer is “it is what the last landlord used,” rewrite it.
Apply the same criteria to every applicant in the same order
Consistency is where most small landlords actually lose. Not malice. Sequence.
The pattern to avoid: a strong applicant gets approved on the strength of a conversation and never has the references called, while a weaker one gets the full treatment and fails at step four. Both were screened. They were not screened the same way, and the file shows it.
Run the same steps, in the same order, for everybody:
- Complete application received and time-stamped.
- Identity confirmed.
- Income verified against the stated minimum.
- Consumer report pulled, with written authorization on file.
- Landlord references called, using the same questions.
- Decision recorded against the written criteria, with the reason.
If an applicant fails at step three, stop and record it. Do not keep looking for a better reason.
Keep a record that shows what you did
A fair housing complaint arrives long after the unit is rented, and the only thing that answers it is a file. Keep, per applicant: the application, the written criteria in force on that date, the verification notes, the report if one was pulled, the decision, and the date of each.
Two records matter more than the rest. The first is the criteria document with a date on it, because it proves the standard predates the applicant. The second is the decision line, in the applicant’s own file, naming which criterion the application failed.
Keeping the application, the criteria, and the decision on one record is most of what screening inside LeaseRooster is for. LeaseRooster does not run reports and stores no raw Social Security number: the report comes from your own consumer reporting agency, and what stays behind is the application, the decision, and the date.
When the report drives the denial, a notice is required
This is a separate obligation and landlords miss it constantly. If information in a consumer report contributed to a denial, a higher deposit, a rent increase, or a co-signer requirement, the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires an adverse action notice naming the agency that furnished the report, stating that the agency did not make the decision, and telling the applicant about the right to a free copy and the right to dispute what is in it (15 U.S.C. § 1681m(a)). The FTC’s landlord guidance says the notice is required even when the report was not the main reason. Adverse action notices covers what goes in one.
Two qualified applicants, one unit
Write the tiebreak before you need it. First complete application wins is defensible, easy to document, and required in substance by some state fee statutes anyway. Highest score wins is also defensible if the score is your own written formula and every applicant was scored on it. “Whoever seemed like a better fit” is not a tiebreak. It is the sentence a plaintiff’s lawyer reads aloud.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules change and local ordinances vary. Confirm current requirements with your city, county, or an attorney before you act.