(H) For any person to do any of the following:(1) Refuse to sell, transfer, assign, rent, lease, sublease, or finance housing accommodations, refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of housing accommodations, or otherwise deny or make unavailable housing accommodations because of race, color, religion, sex, military status, familial status, ancestry, disability, or national origin;"Also New York Executive Law prohibits housing discrimination based on military status.Again, occupation or military status may not be a Federally protected class, but that doesn't mean on the state level you won't run into problems.

We just bought a duplex in the Hudson Valley and are now living in one of the units. Our new tenant has been living there for 7 years and the previous landlord allowed smoking in the unit. We have a strict no smoking ...

@Michael Corona - Forgive me for posting contrary to your question, I know everyone has their preference on matters of finance and debt on which you cannot change a person's mind on such things any more than you can on politics or religion - but I can't help but wonder WHY you'd want to pay off 5.25% interest fixed rate 20 years loans early!?

Provided, of course, that the landlord isn’t discriminating based on any protected classification (i.e. race, religion, gender, etc).However, some individual cities (like Seattle for example) have passed ordinances that require landlords to use a “first come, first served” type of system and basically accept the first qualified applicant that applied.  

Chicago has 14 protected classes for Fair housing-1-Race2-Sex 3-color 4age 5-Religion 6-disability 7-National origin 8-ancestry 9-Parent/parental status 10-Sexual orientation11- Gender identity 12-marital status13-military status 14-source of income You need to be careful on the language you use for advertising a rental.

The plan originally is to lease out geographic religions to investors who already use bird dogs or want to use bird dogs and want an easy painless way of recruiting, training, managing, communicating with and paying them.I'm onto something.

Of course, it is always safest/best to avoid discrimination against protected classes (race, religion, national origin, familial status, creed, sex) in order to avoid breaking the law, though there are even exceptions there (i.e. if you lived in the house, for example, there are some exemptions). 

It's like science and religion.

No one would ask on an application form what the applicant's sexual orientation, religion, race is etc...so why would you ask about ESA? 

I swear on all the religions that they dont.