​Giovanna Bonafede (Associate-McLean, VA) scored a significant win for our housing authority client in a Fair Housing/ADA case. The plaintiff brought an action in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against our client and their individual employees alleging violations of the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the American Rehabilitation Act, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress. The plaintiff alleged that our client and their employees discriminated against her by denying her housing voucher following an internal appeal process conducted by the housing authority. Plaintiff previously filed a near identical suit against our clients in the same court, which was dismissed without prejudice and which plaintiff appealed to the Fourth Circuit. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the court’s dismissal. Giovanna’s motion to dismiss argued (1) that res judicata bars the plaintiff’s claims, (2) the plaintiff’s claims are time-barred, and (3) the plaintiff failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. The Court found that the claims were time-barred by the appropriate statutes of limitations and did not address the remaining arguments. The plaintiff attempted to salvage her claims by arguing that the statutes of limitations were tolled through the time she spent on other lawsuits and the appeal. However, the Court agreed with Giovanna, finding that “If a lawsuit is dismissed without prejudice, meaning it can be refiled, ‘the tolling effect of the filing of the suit is wiped out and the statute of limitations is deemed to have continued running from whenever the cause of action accrued, without interruption by that filing.’” The Court was not swayed by the plaintiff’s argument that the enforcement of her voucher termination tolls her claims in seeking to invoke the continuing violation doctrine. The Court determined that a “continuing violation is occasioned by continual unlawful actions, not continual ill effects from an original violation.”