Supreme Court to consider whether Americans with Disabilities Act 'tester' can sue hotels for non-compliance with the law
Supreme Court to consider whether Americans with Disabilities Act 'tester' can sue hotels for non-compliance with the law
The Supreme Court will consider the strength of the Americans with Disabilities Act on Wednesday when it hears a dispute over whether a self-appointed “tester” of the civil rights law has the right to sue hotels over alleged violations of its provisions.
The Supreme Court will consider the strength of the Americans with Disabilities Act on Wednesday when it hears a dispute over whether a self-appointed “tester” of the civil rights law has the right to sue hotels over alleged violations of its provisions.
How the justices rule could have a significant impact on the practical effectiveness of the landmark legislation, which aims to shield individuals with disabilities from discrimination in public accommodations and a host of other settings.
At the center of the dispute is Deborah Laufer, a disability rights advocate who has brought hundreds of lawsuits against hotels she says are not in compliance with ADA rules requiring hotels to disclose information about how accessible they are to individuals with disabilities.
Laufer, a Florida resident who uses a wheelchair and has a visual impairment, doesn’t intend to visit the hotels she’s suing. Instead, the complaints are made in an effort to force the hotels to update their websites to be in compliance with the law. Legal experts say the strategy, known as “testing,” is necessary to ensure enforcement of the historic law.
Well, the supreme court recently decided on a case where the plaintiff had absolutely no standing. This was the case where the website developer didn't want to make a website for a gay couple, even though she had never developed a website before and there was no gay couple. So sure, this person can probably sue successfully. All rules are out the window at this point.
Are you implying that this case, where businesses are in clear violation of the ADA (aka "the law", and were undoubtedly approached and asked to correct this before it escalated to a law suit) has as little standing as, is as frivolous as, or is comparable in any way at all, to a case where a bigot literally made up shit to try and game the system to set a bigoted precedent?
Article has a point, it's the governments job to enforce this stuff, especially since the person is just checking random websites to see if they mention something, and immediately suing them if it's missing information...
If they're doing this to raise awareness, it's working, but I can't tell from the article if that's their goal or they're just trying to amass money from settlements.
I can't see the Supreme Court ruling in the plaintiffs favor
Edit:
Found another article with more info
https://19thnews.org/2023/10/supreme-court-acheson-laufer-americans-with-disabilities-act/
She claims to not make money on this, but at least for ones in Cali the plaintiff can get 4k for each one. So I'm not sure if she means "haven't made a profit" instead of "never received payouts". She filed over 600 of these all over the country, I doubt she hasn't done one in Cali.
Also, apparently the defendant has to pay legal fees for the plantif, and her old lawyer got caught "grossly exaggerating hours worked" so that might be the motivation if there was also kickbacks.
Especially with how many she does, I'd imagine her lawyer didn't need a lot of time to file these. It's possible the lawyer would overbill X hours and then give her a cut.
Definitely seems like there might be something shady happening, since we already know her lawyer was being shady.
they’re just trying to amass money from settlements
5-4 Pod covered this on the linked episode. The discussion of the case starts around 51:20. But, no, there's no money to made here. The testers identify non-compliance and then the hotel gets sued. That almost always means the hotel settles to become compliant; they just fix the problem.
They also address the idea of it being government's job to enforce to enforce the ADA? How? Where do the resources come from? There's no money to be made here because the business just fixes the problem. It's purely a drain on government resources to enforce the ADA. But if testers can't sue for non-compliance then the effectiveness of the ADA plummets: it basically becomes an unenforceable law.
Granted, these aren't legal arguments. They're based on the reality of what happens and will happen if testers can't sue, should the Supreme Court decide that.
But, no, there’s no money to made here.
Legally, except in some states like Cali where they get 4k a case...
And one of her past lawyers was using illegal means to make money off this:
Laufer’s own legal representation in other ADA cases represents one way this system can be abused. Her former lawyer Gillespie was suspended for six months for allegedly exaggerating the number of hours he worked on her cases, inflating the amount he was able to take from the defendants through legal fees. This is the same misconduct cited by Laufer’s current lawyer, Kelsi Brown Corkran, in their effort to have the Supreme Court case dismissed. It is unclear how common this issue is.
https://19thnews.org/2023/10/supreme-court-acheson-laufer-americans-with-disabilities-act/
Do we know if she got kickbacks from her lawyer doing that? Nope. Maybe that lawyer was just shady and she didn't know/care.
But it would explain why she's trying to get a recent case thrown out, and the people she sued are trying to take it to court.
Usually the defendant would be happy their case was dismissed
There's a simple protection against this sort of trolling: Comply with the ADA.
She seems to go after tiny independent hotels, you know, the ones who barely have a website...
It's not like she's complaining about lack of ramps or actual accommodations, she's literally suing them over what their website doesn't say.
Seriously, this is a bit of a rabbit hole, and the more you read about it, the worse she looks.
She is no better than a patent troll. Clogging up the legal system as a career. You shouldn't be able to bring an ADA suit unless you are actually inconvenienced by it. I see so many ADA issues in the world especially my neighborhood sidewalks. Can anyone bring random lawsuits or do I have to be in a wheelchair? The person in the article is not actually being inconvenienced why would I need to be.
I know this lady seems awful, but the concept of a "tester" extends to other issues where invalidating the concept basically allows the illegal behavior to exist unchecked.
Let's use the example of a bar that has a locally known, but unwritten, rule against allowing in black patrons. This isn't legal. But you can't really bring suit unless an unfamiliar black traveler tries to stumble into the bar, only to be told they're not allowed. Or someone who knows the unwritten rule exists can go to get denied, thereby providing actionable proof of discrimination for a lawsuit.
Get out your checkbook, hotels. Daddy Thomas needs a new yacht
It's strange reading about this. Once upon a time when I did insurance for hotels and motels there was a disabled lawyer who would file claims for hotels being out of ADA compliance.
He would travel all over and stay at random hotels in their handicap accessible room and proceed to measure everything. Door frame widths, toilet heights, diameter of the handlebars in the shower, the exact angle of the zero entry showers, height difference between outside and inside of the door. Everything.
Then he would fax us these 50pg+ claims requesting compensation for everything that wasn't exactly in compliance. Usually this was after attempting to shakedown the owner/manager of the hotel. We would file the claim with the company and send the info to the agent telling them to talk with their client and get the compliance issues fixed.
After a while we started to also get claims where hotels would refuse him service because they knew who he was. The agents were warning their clients about him.
Far as I know the companies never paid a dime and just referred him to the ADA and denied the claims. They never said it outright but they would have preferred the hotels just binned the claims in lieu of filing them but understood why they didn't.