What Landlords Cannot Do: The Illegal Actions to Avoid

Owning rental property comes with real power over someone’s home — and the law puts firm limits on how you may use it. A landlord who crosses those limits does not just lose a case; they can end up paying the tenant, sometimes several times over, while the tenant stays put. This guide lays out exactly what landlords legally cannot do — from discriminating against protected classes and locking tenants out to ignoring repairs, keeping deposits, and raising rent unlawfully — with the legal basis behind each rule and the penalties for breaking it. It closes with the thing you always can do: screen every applicant lawfully, consistently, and in full compliance with fair-housing and credit-reporting law.

The specifics differ by state — how many days of entry notice you owe, how long you have to return a deposit, what your local fair-housing ordinance adds — but the core prohibitions below are recognized almost everywhere. Most of them trace back to a handful of foundational protections: the federal Fair Housing Act, each state’s implied warranty of habitability, state security-deposit statutes, anti-retaliation laws, and the universal rule that only a court can order a tenant removed. Learn the categories here, then confirm your state’s exact numbers before you act.

A short overview video sits below; the sections that follow break down each prohibited action in detail — what it is, why it is illegal, and what it costs a landlord who does it anyway — and then turn to the lawful alternative that keeps most landlords out of trouble entirely.

Before the detail, here is the full list of what a landlord legally cannot do. Each row is a category the law treats seriously, backed by federal statute, state statute, or both. The rest of this guide takes them one at a time.

The single most important limit on a landlord is the ban on housing discrimination. The federal Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to refuse to rent, set different terms, provide different services, or otherwise treat a person differently because of a protected class. This applies at every stage of the relationship — how you advertise, who you agree to show the unit to, how you screen, whether you approve, the terms and rent you offer, the services you provide, and whether and how you end the tenancy. Our full Fair Housing Act guide and protected classes guide go deeper; the essentials are below.

The Seven Federal Protected Classes

State and Local Add-Ons

Many states and cities protect more classes than federal law does. Depending on where your property sits, you may also be barred from discriminating based on source of income (including Section 8 housing vouchers and other subsidies), age, marital status, sexual orientation and gender identity as express state categories, military or veteran status, ancestry, immigration status, and even criminal history in a limited, individualized way. Source-of-income protection is one of the fastest-growing categories — in a growing number of states and cities it is illegal to refuse a tenant simply because they would pay part of the rent with a voucher.

What a Fair Housing Violation Costs

The exposure is serious. A tenant or applicant can file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development at no cost, sue in federal or state court, or both. Remedies include the applicant’s actual damages (out-of-pocket losses plus emotional distress), civil penalties that can reach tens of thousands of dollars for a first violation and far more for repeat offenders, punitive damages in court cases, injunctions ordering you to rent or change policies, and the tenant’s attorney fees. A single discrimination finding can cost more than a year’s rent and follow you into every future case.

No matter how far behind a tenant is or how egregiously they have broken the lease, a landlord may never remove them personally. Eviction is a court process, start to finish. Taking matters into your own hands is an illegal “self-help” eviction in all fifty states, and it flips the situation instantly: the tenant you tried to remove becomes the plaintiff who collects from you.

Actions That Are Illegal Everywhere

• Changing the locks or otherwise locking the tenant out.
• Removing the tenant’s belongings or setting them at the curb.
• Shutting off utilities — water, electricity, gas, or heat — to make the unit unlivable.
• Removing doors, windows, or fixtures to pressure the tenant out.
• Physically forcing or threatening the tenant to leave.
• Harassing the tenant with the goal of driving them out.

The only lawful way to remove a tenant who will not leave is to serve a proper notice, file an eviction lawsuit, win a judgment, obtain a writ of possession, and let the sheriff carry out the lockout. Our step-by-step how to evict a tenant guide walks the entire lawful process; the point here is that skipping it is never legal.

A tenant’s right to quiet enjoyment means the rental is their private home, not the landlord’s to enter at will. Most states require the landlord to give advance written notice — commonly twenty-four to forty-eight hours — and to enter only during reasonable hours and for a legitimate purpose such as repairs, inspections, or showing the unit to prospective renters or buyers.

The Notice Rule and Its Limits

• Cannot enter without advance notice — typically twenty-four hours minimum, longer in some states.
• Cannot enter at unreasonable hours — entry is generally limited to normal daytime and business hours.
• Cannot enter repeatedly without a real reason — excessive or pretextual entries can amount to harassment.
• May enter without notice only in a genuine emergency — fire, flooding, a gas leak, or another immediate threat to safety or the property.

State law fills in the exact notice period and the permitted hours, so confirm your own state’s rule on the landlord entry laws by state page before you schedule any visit. A landlord who ignores the notice requirement can be liable for damages, and a pattern of unwanted entries can support a harassment or constructive-eviction claim.

A landlord cannot punish a tenant for exercising a legal right. Retaliation is prohibited in nearly every state, and for good reason: the protections tenants have — the right to habitable housing, to report code violations, to withhold rent where allowed — would be worthless if a landlord could simply retaliate against anyone who used them.

Protected Tenant Activities

Adverse action becomes illegal retaliation when it follows a tenant’s protected act, such as:

• Reporting a health, safety, or building-code violation to a government agency.
• Requesting a needed repair or complaining about habitability.
• Withholding rent or using repair-and-deduct where state law permits it.
• Joining or organizing a tenant union or association.
• Exercising any other right under the lease or landlord-tenant law.

Prohibited Adverse Actions

The retaliatory responses landlords cannot take include serving an eviction notice, raising the rent, reducing or eliminating services, refusing to renew a lease, or otherwise making the tenancy worse in response to the protected activity. Many states apply a presumption of retaliation: if the landlord takes an adverse action within a set window — often six months to a year — after the tenant’s protected act, the law presumes the action was retaliatory, and the landlord must prove a legitimate, independent business reason to overcome it. Our landlord retaliation guide covers the presumption and how to document a lawful reason.

Security deposits are governed by strict state statutes because the money belongs to the tenant unless the landlord properly proves a right to keep part of it. A landlord cannot treat the deposit as extra income, and cannot withhold it on a hunch or after the legal deadline has passed.

Deposit Rules Landlords Cannot Break

• Cannot collect more than the statutory maximum — typically one to two months’ rent, depending on the state.
• Cannot commingle the deposit with personal funds where the state requires a separate or escrow account.
• Cannot miss the return deadline — usually fourteen to thirty days after move-out to return the deposit or an itemized statement.
• Cannot deduct without itemized documentation of each charge and its cost.
• Cannot deduct for normal wear and tear — only for unpaid rent and damage beyond ordinary use.

When a deposit dispute arises, the landlord who followed the statute — documented the unit’s condition, itemized every deduction, and met the deadline — almost always prevails. The one who did not usually loses the right to keep anything. Our security deposit dispute guide and the security deposit laws by state reference cover the numbers and the process.

Under the Fair Housing Act’s disability protections, a landlord cannot refuse a tenant with a disability a reasonable accommodation — a change to a rule, policy, or service — or a reasonable modification — a physical change to the unit — when it is necessary for the tenant to use and enjoy the home. This is a separate, affirmative duty: it is not enough to avoid discriminating; you must also say yes to reasonable disability-related requests.

Common Accommodations You Cannot Refuse

• Assistance animals. Service animals and emotional support animals are not pets. You generally cannot deny them, charge a pet fee or pet deposit, or apply a no-pets policy to them — even in a no-pet building.
• Accessible parking or a closer unit for a tenant with a mobility disability.
• A live-in aide or a flexible rule to accommodate a disability-related need.
• Physical modifications such as grab bars or a ramp — which a tenant may make at their own expense in private housing, and which the landlord must permit.

You may ask for reliable documentation of a disability-related need when the disability or the need is not obvious, but you cannot demand detailed medical records, insist on a specific diagnosis, or interrogate the tenant. Refusing a legitimate accommodation, dragging out the request, or charging extra for an assistance animal is a fair-housing violation with the same penalties as any other form of discrimination.

A landlord can only charge fees that the lease authorizes and the law permits. Many charges landlords try to add are capped or outright prohibited, and a fee that fails the test is generally unenforceable no matter what the lease says.

Fees That Cross the Line

• Deposits above the statutory cap. Most states limit the security deposit to one or two months’ rent; a larger deposit, or a “last month plus security plus pet deposit” stack that exceeds the cap, is illegal.
• Excessive or automatic late fees. Many states require late fees to be reasonable and cap them at a small percentage of the monthly rent, and some require a grace period before any fee applies.
• Nonrefundable “deposits.” Labeling a fee a deposit to keep it, or charging a nonrefundable cleaning or move-in fee where the state bars it, is unlawful.
• Junk and pass-through fees. Vague administrative, convenience, or processing fees not permitted by law and not disclosed in the lease are generally unenforceable.

Charging illegal fees is not just unenforceable — in many states it triggers statutory penalties and can support a broader claim that the landlord engaged in an unfair or deceptive practice. When in doubt, charge only what the lease clearly states and the statute clearly allows.

Nearly every state imposes an implied warranty of habitability — a legal guarantee, built into every residential lease whether written or not, that the landlord will keep the unit safe and livable. A landlord cannot refuse repairs, let hazards fester, or push maintenance duties onto the tenant in a way the law forbids. Critically, this warranty cannot be waived by a lease clause; a “tenant accepts the unit as-is and waives all repairs” provision is void.

What Habitability Requires

• Working heat, plumbing, hot water, and electrical systems.
• A structurally sound, weatherproof building with a sound roof, walls, and windows.
• Safe, working common areas and required smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors.
• Freedom from serious pest infestations and environmental hazards.
• Prompt repair of conditions that make the unit unsafe or unfit to live in.

When a landlord ignores a serious defect after proper notice, the tenant often has powerful remedies: withholding rent, repairing the problem and deducting the cost, reporting the landlord to code enforcement, or in extreme cases moving out and treating the tenancy as constructively terminated. The landlord’s own maintenance responsibilities are the flip side of this rule — keeping up with them is both the law and the cheapest way to avoid these claims.

The right to set rent is not unlimited. A landlord cannot raise the rent whenever they please, in any amount, without the notice and limits the law requires. Three separate rules constrain increases: the lease, notice statutes, and rent regulation.

The Limits on Raising Rent

• Not during a fixed-term lease. Rent is locked for the term unless the lease itself expressly allows an increase; you cannot raise it mid-lease otherwise.
• Not without proper notice. For month-to-month tenancies, most states require advance written notice — often thirty days, and sixty to ninety days for larger increases or longer-term tenants.
• Not beyond a rent-control or rent-stabilization cap. In regulated cities and states, the maximum annual increase is set by law, and exceeding it is an illegal overcharge.
• Not as retaliation or discrimination. An increase aimed at a tenant who complained, or tied to a protected class, is illegal regardless of notice or amount.

Our guide on whether a landlord can raise rent during a lease covers the mid-lease question in detail. Where rent regulation applies, an illegal increase can be rolled back and the tenant can recover the overcharge, sometimes multiplied, plus fees.

Even without a formal lockout, a landlord cannot make a tenant’s life so miserable that they are forced to leave. This is a constructive eviction, and it is treated much like an illegal removal. Repeated unannounced entries, threats, cutting off promised services, refusing to do essential repairs, removing amenities, or a sustained campaign of intimidation can all cross the line.

When a landlord’s conduct makes the unit uninhabitable or effectively forces a tenant out, the law lets the tenant treat the tenancy as terminated, stop paying rent, move out, and sue for damages — and in some jurisdictions harassment carries its own statutory penalties on top. A shutoff of heat in winter, a barrage of hostile visits, or the removal of a working appliance to pressure a tenant are the kinds of acts that convert a landlord into a defendant. The rule is simple: you cannot accomplish through harassment what you are forbidden to do through a lockout.

The lease binds the landlord as much as the tenant. A landlord cannot simply ignore the promises in the agreement — the right to a specific unit, included utilities or parking, a promised appliance or amenity, the agreed rent for the term — and cannot insert or enforce illegal clauses. Even when a tenant signs a lease containing an unlawful provision, that provision is unenforceable.

Lease Clauses That Are Void Even If Signed

A landlord who breaches the lease — failing to deliver possession, removing a promised service, or trying to enforce a void clause — exposes themselves to breach-of-contract damages and hands the tenant a defense to any claim of their own. The lease is a two-way contract, and the law will not enforce its illegal parts against the tenant.

The prohibitions above are not abstract. Each one carries real financial exposure, and the penalties are deliberately steep so that breaking the rule is never the cheaper path. Here is how the most common violations tend to land, from most to least severe.

Notice the pattern: almost every category adds the tenant’s attorney fees on top of the damages, which is what makes even a modest violation expensive to defend. The cheapest strategy by far is to stay inside the lines — and the single best way to do that starts before a tenant ever moves in.

After a list this long of prohibitions, it is worth being clear about the flip side: landlords have a strong, legal right to choose qualified tenants. Fair-housing law does not force you to rent to someone who cannot afford the unit or has a disqualifying history — it only forbids choosing by protected class. The lawful way to protect your property is to screen every applicant against the same objective, written criteria and apply them consistently.

Done right, screening is your best defense against nearly every problem in this guide. Consistent, documented criteria are the strongest possible evidence that a rejection had nothing to do with a protected class. And by surfacing prior evictions, unpaid judgments, and income that does not support the rent, thorough screening prevents the nonpayment and lease breaches that push landlords toward the very self-help temptations that get them sued. For the deeper picture of who holds which rights, see our tenant rights versus landlord rights guide.

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