Federal discrimination lawsuit filed over whites-only housing development in Arkansas

A federal discrimination lawsuit was filed Wednesday against a whites-only community based in north Arkansas by a woman in a multiracial family whom the group did not allow to purchase land.

Missouri resident Michelle Walker’s complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, states that Return to the Land’s rejection of her application to buy land violated the Fair Housing Act and Civil Rights Act on the federal and state levels.

Return to the Land is a white nationalist organization that describes itself as a “private membership association” promoting “European heritage communities” and “traditional views.”

The group’s Ozarks chapter owns 160 acres of land near Ravenden for a housing settlement that’s only open to whites, Christians and heterosexuals.

The group has drawn condemnation from elected officials in Arkansas and Missouri, and its planned development received international attention last year. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said last year that an investigation into the group found no evidence of illegal activity. Griffin is reviewing Wednesday’s lawsuit, his spokesperson Jeff LeMaster said.

‘Whites-only’ group draws bipartisan rebuke over potential move to Missouri 

Walker’s November 2025 application to buy land from Return to the Land included questions about her and her family’s religion and ancestry, which surprised her because they were “clearly violating federal and state fair housing laws prohibiting consideration of race and religion in a land-sale decision,” the complaint states.

Walker is a white Christian woman who has Jewish ancestry, a Black husband and biracial children, according to the complaint. The Return to the Land online application portal deemed Walker’s family “not an ideal fit” for the organization.

The legal argument

Walker’s complaint asks the court to block Return to the Land from engaging in further housing discrimination and award her compensatory damages for the “emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment, and pain and suffering” she has experienced. The suit also seeks unspecified punitive damages “that would effectively deter similar conduct in the future” and pay her attorneys’ fees.

“Ms. Walker has been deprived of her housing and civil rights, including the equal opportunity to obtain and use land and build, use, and enjoy a home,” the complaint states. “Ms. Walker has suffered economic damage from being denied the investment and income-generating benefits of purchasing a parcel in the RTTL community.”

The federal and state Fair Housing Act and Civil Rights Act forbid the refusal to engage in property transactions “because of race, color, national origin, or religion.”

The defendants in the case are Return to the Land, its five co-founders, its Ozarks chapter and the Arkansas-based corporation that owns the land where the chapter is based.

Legal Aid of Arkansas, the Legal Defense Fund and the Washington D.C.-based law firm Relman Colfax are representing Walker.

The lawsuit aims to remind “white separatist organizations seeking to perpetuate segregation” that “our nation will not abandon the fair housing rights we have fought so hard to uphold and enforce,” Relman Colfax partner John Relman said in a news release.

“Return to the Land is attempting to revive housing policies and practices from one of America’s darkest eras, and we will fight to ensure this does not stand,” Legal Defense Fund senior counsel Jason Bailey said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Return to the Land had not responded to requests for comment via email or Facebook.

Return to the Land’s values

Its Facebook page includes posts that refer to the Confederate flag as “peak America,” falsely correlate mass shootings with the King James Bible’s decline in popularity, and celebrate an October 2025 gathering of over 200 people at its north Arkansas site.

Walker’s complaint includes a brief history of Return to the Land, which formed in 2023 with the goal of forming all-white communities to prevent what its founders call “white genocide” via growth of the nonwhite, multiracial and Jewish populations.

Return to the Land’s application form requires applicants to describe their and their family’s ethnic and religious backgrounds. It also asks if they support, oppose or are neutral on segregation, procreation, multiculturalism, same-sex marriage and transgender identities, labeling them as “controversial topics.”

Applicants are required to submit photos or a video “to confirm that they appear white” and are encouraged to submit DNA test results to back up their claims of their ancestry, the complaint states.

Return to the Land sells vacant land below the market rate to attract new members, and it expels members from the community if they are found to have non-white ancestry or if they begin an interracial relationship, the complaint states.

Arkansas Democrats call for investigation into “Whites Only” community

The organization’s website says its Ozarks chapter includes parts of Missouri and Oklahoma in addition to Arkansas, calling the Ozarks “heavily conservative and rural with favorable demographics.”

Other chapters are in Europe, the eastern and western United States, and the “Great White North,” meaning Canada and Alaska.

Return to the Land co-founder Eric Orwoll, a defendant in Walker’s lawsuit, told the Missouri Independent last year that the organization is made of “white identitarians” rather than white nationalists.

Arkansas Democrats asked Griffin last year to investigate the organization for discrimination.