The 5-4 decision affirms the intent of the 50-year-old Fair Housing Act: implicit discrimination is as destructive as explicit discrimination.

At the heart of the decision is the notion of “disparate impact”: whether the Fair Housing Act can be read to prohibit policies that adversely affect minority groups even when that’s not the stated goal of the policy. Explicit racial discrimination is illegal under the Fair Housing Act. According to the court’s ruling today, disparate impact is recognizable as a category of racial discrimination under the law.

The 5-4 decision bolsters a critical reading of the Fair Housing Act since its passage in 1968, one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The Supreme Court decision supports prior decisions about disparate impact by 11 courts of appeals...

The opinion—in a case that the Cato Institute described as “very likely [ . . . ] the third-most-noted case from this term” before Thursday morning’s news—was something of a surprise. Court watchers widely predicted that Justice Kennedy would deliver the verdict, for several docket and calendar reasons. Since he has typically sided with conservatives on discrimination issues in the past (on affirmative action in particular), many speculated that he would do so again with regard to disparate impact.

“The results-oriented phrase ‘otherwise make unavailable’ refers to the consequences of an action rather than the actor’s intent.”

Kennedy's decision centers on the phrasing of the act. (Another surprise, perhaps, since the case that Texas mounted narrowed like an originalist laser on the wording of the law.) Under the Fair Housing Act, it is illegal to "refuse to sell or rent . . . or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to a person because of race” or other protected status, as the Justice notes. One phrase there is key.

"The results-oriented phrase 'otherwise make unavailable' refers to the consequences of an action rather than the actor’s intent," Kennedy writes.

Two other similar Fair Housing Act cases settled before they reached the Supreme Court. “The settlements weren’t a coincidence: Civil rights groups and the federal government were worried that the conservatives on the Roberts Court would hold that the [Fair Housing Act] does not allow disparate-impact lawsuits,” wrote Amy Howe, a SCOTUSblog reporter, in the run-up to today’s verdict.