WASHINGTON — In the largest settlement of its kind, the developers of a luxury home project in Maryland and the agency that designed its advertising have agreed to pay $325,000 for excluding blacks from their promotional campaign, attorneys said Friday.
A 1987 lawsuit filed by a black Washington resident charged that Avenel Corp. of Potomac, Md., used white models almost exclusively in its newspaper advertisements with the intent to discourage blacks from buying homes.
“What these ads say to me is we don’t want people like you living in our development,” said Girardeau A. Spann, who filed the suit along with two local nonprofit housing organizations.
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