Affirmative Defenses: Retaliation and Discrimination

While rare, some landlords are  unscrupulous. Such landlords may try to evict a tenant as retaliation for:

1. Complaining to a governmental agency about the poor condition of the property.
2. Complaining to the landlord (or his management company) about the poor condition of the property.
3. Joining a tenant's union or trying to organize the tenants. 

This is simply a list for illustrative purposes, only an attorney that a tenant retains can see if any of these defenses apply. However, it goes without saying that no landlord should engage in any of those activities. And in the unfortunate event that a landlord does engage in any of those activities, a tenant may have an affirmative defense to eviction.

Along similar lines is a landlord bringing an unlawful detainer action to discriminate against a tenant. Generally, the United States Constitution, federal laws, state laws, and even local laws,  prohibit a landlord from discriminating against his tenants because of their race, national origin, sexual orientation, family status, disability, gender, age, and religion. Therefore, if a tenant feels that he was evicted based on any of these factors he may be able to assert an affirmative defense against his landlord.