Hypothetical Tennant screening situation

[Landon Lee]

Hey guys!

Long story short, I am preparing to list my first investment property for rent within the next month, and I have come upon a scenario that I cannot confidently find a solution too. Again, this is simply hypothetical and I may never come across this situation, but in the event that I do I would like some input from investors who either know how this should be handled or have experienced this before. 

**Hypothetical scenario begins**

The property is listed for rent on multiple platforms, and our advertisements list all of our minimum qualifying standards:

Credit score: 600

Monthly income: 3x the monthly rent

Felonies: None

Previous landlords: Two good references

Property will rent for $1,000

Fortune decides to smile upon me, and within a week I receive two potential tennants who would like to apply to rent the property after having scheduled individual showings of the house. Tennant A is a member of a protected class and Tennant B is a white guy in his 30s; their stats are as follows:

Tennant A; 700 credit score, monthly income of $4,000, no felonies or any other marks on the record, and two positive landlord references.

Tennant B; 650 credit score, monthly income of $3,500, no felonies or any other marks on the record, and two positive landlord references.

Subjective observations of each of the tennants are:

Tennant A; showed up 20 minutes late to our scheduled showing of the property, the vehicle is a pit and obviously not cared for properly, dressed in pajamas, and a review of his social media revealed multiple crude and explicit posts.

Tennant B; Showed up 10 minutes before he was scheduled to view the house, clean car, dressed professionally, and had minimal social media posts all of which were clean and polite. 

**Hypothetical Scenario ends**

Obviously Tennant A had the better tangible qualifications, but Tennant B inspired more confidence in the kind of tennant he would be. Do I have a legitimate legal defense if I choose Tennant B over Tennant A because of the "vibes" I got from each of the two if Tennant A decided to sue me for discriminatory tennant selection?

Thanks for the help!

[Nathan Gesner]

This is a hypothetical, which means I'm hypothetically correct. :)

Assuming both of these applications were approved at the same time, I would offer it to the person I thought was best for the rental, which would be Tenant A. Even though he was late and his car is a dump, he has two positive Landlord references which indicates he takes care of his rentals and pays his rent.  Believe it or not, there is a segment of the population that has a dirty car but a clean home (including my wife).

It's sad to see racist people in the world but I believe they are few. It's also sad that I have to be extra cautious about who I rent to because someone may accuse me of basing my decision on race even though it never enters my mind.