The posts on Facebook and X made a splash: A real estate firm in Eagle was offering free real estate listings to liberals leaving Idaho.
The owner of the real estate firm, Idaho Wild, Mark Fitzpatrick, told the Idaho Statesman, the firm got a range of responses — “everything from people in full support and throwing in additional offers … all the way to people lecturing me about being, whatever, hateful and un-Christian.”
As of Tuesday, no one had taken Fitzpatrick up on his offer.
Still, some asked: Was this kind of real estate advertisement even allowed?
The short answer, according to industry groups and regulators, is yes.
The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination because of national origin, religion or sex, among other “protected classes.”
But political affiliation doesn’t count as a protected group under that law.
Fitzpatrick estimates that over 90% of his clients in recent years have been conservatives moving from California to Idaho.
