\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe federal government in the United States has sued Venkatchalam Mani, the owner of a Pennsylvania rental property, alleging that he sexually harassed a female tenant and retaliated against her when she refused his advances.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania on Wednesday, alleges that Mani, a landlord in the State College borough, made unwelcome sexual advances toward a female tenant, including sexual touching.<\/p>\n
After the tenant rejected his advances, Mani failed to respond to her repeated requests for maintenance, including repairing a broken furnace in the middle of winter that eventually caught fire.<\/p>\n
“This conduct is illegal. The Justice Department will uphold the rights of female tenants to housing without the threat of sexual harassment by a landlord,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K Dhillon of the department’s Civil Rights Division.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit seeks monetary damages for the tenant and her children, and a court order barring future discrimination.<\/p>\n
“Attempts to exploit tenants for sexual favours, sexual assault and retaliation by landlords will never be tolerated in the Middle District of Pennsylvania,” said US Attorney Brian D Miller for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
The case was referred to the Justice Department after the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) received a complaint, completed an investigation and issued a charge of discrimination.<\/p>\n
The tenant had filed a complaint against Mani with the HUD.<\/p>\n
After an investigation, the HUD determined that Mani discriminated against the applicant in violation of the Fair Housing Act and issued a charge of discrimination.<\/p>\n
After the tenant chose to have the matter decided in federal court, the HUD referred the matter to the Department of Justice.\u00a0 — PTI\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The federal government in the United States has sued Venkatchalam Mani, the owner of a Pennsylvania rental property,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2376,70305,110395,30811,110394,12784,110396,28,30,29,110393],"class_list":["post-260180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-breaking-news","tag-columns","tag-india-news","tag-interviews","tag-live-commentary","tag-live-updates","tag-news-india","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-rediff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}