Colorado landlord must pay $675K after refusing to lease to Muslim tenants

A landlord in Denver must pay a Muslim father and son $675,000 after she was recorded telling a tenant to find someone to sublet a property who was an “American person … good like you and me,” instead of them. 

The men sued the woman last year and the settlement was reached last month, The Associated Press reported on Friday. 

“My dad and I just wanted to know that there’s justice, that she can’t do this,” Rashad Khan told the AP. 

{mosads}He and his father hoped to open a second Indian restaurant and planned to take over tenant Craig Caldwell’s lease. Landlord Katina Gatchis did not approve the sublet for weeks and allegedly cited the men’s Muslim faith as the reason why. 

“American person, I need. Good like you and me,” Gatchis said in a conversation with Caldwell that he secretly recorded. 

“They bring all the Muslims from the Middle East, and then I have a problem around here, bam boom, bam boom,” she allegedly said in a later conversation. 

Khan told the wire service that he was very surprised by Gatchis’s remarks. 

“Just to look at my name and assume everything in my life, everything that I am,” he said. “I was angry, I was disappointed. I started to have a little bit of self-doubt. It kind of creeps into your mind: Who else is thinking these things? Is she the only one?”