The firm is best known for unsuccessfully defending a landmark civil rights lawsuit that concerned "reverse discrimination" and racial quotas in the housing complex, and for controversy during the sale of the development in the mid-2000s.
[1] In 1980, the NAACP initiated a class-action suit against Starrett City Associates and charged that the owner of the housing complex attempted to maintain racial quotas by selective approval of tenants based on racial and ethnic profiles.
Starrett City Associates argued that the quotas were necessary to maintain racial balance.
The New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal was also named as a defendant in the suit because it had oversight of the public money spent to build the project and allowed the quotas to exist.
[4] In 1990, Starrett proposed to make apartments available to Soviet Jews who came to the United States in order to maintain racial diversity.