This was entirely predictable, and here’s the reason why (from the BBC report):
//What was critical in this case was the independent evidence of discrimination, including that gathered by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants in two mystery shopping exercises where identical applications were made to landlords but with key details such as names changed.
The aim was to determine whether decisions were being on the basis of ethnicity or nationality.
Where people could provide a UK passport, there was no evidence of ethnicity discrimination.
However, when they could not, the person with an ethnic name was less successful in gaining a tenancy than the one with a white British name. This showed that landlords concerned about a possible prosecution under the right to rent scheme were looking at ethnicity as a means of refusing prospective tenants.
That is what led Mr Justice Spencer to conclude the scheme "does not merely provide the occasion or opportunity for private landlords to discriminate but causes them to do so where otherwise they would not", describing such discrimination by landlords a being "logical and wholly predicable" when faced with potential sanctions and penalties for getting things wrong.//
And here’s a comment from Lara ten Caten (sic), a solicitor with Liberty (an organisation I am not prone to side with, but in this case they have a very good point):
“…the judgement was another nail in the coffin for the government's misguided, discriminatory and unworkable hostile environment policy."
"While effective immigration control is a legitimate aim for any government, the Home Office must stop outsourcing its discriminatory policies to third parties who are ill-equipped to enforce them but may be slapped with heavy fines and even end up in prison if they don't." she said.
The government is fond of criminalising otherwise law-abiding citizens and businesses, making them responsible for policing the UK’s borders, a task which should rightly fall on the Border Force. Hauliers and drivers are fined when illegals stow away on their lorries when there is little or nothing they can do to prevent it. Up to now, landlords were expected to check the credentials of those to whom they rent property. It’s easy meat. Far easier than properly controlling our borders.