Earlier this year, it looked like the Supreme Court would deliver a death blow to the Americans with Disabilities Act. Acheson Hotels LLC had filed an appeals case against disability rights campaigner Deborah Laufer, who has filed hundreds of cases against hotels, including those aimed by Acheson, that she claims fail to disclose their accessibility information on their websites. The company filed suit because Laufer never planned on staying at the hotel and therefore, the company argued, she had no standing to file a complaint.
The case ended without the disability rights community taking what many feared would be a loss because he court ruled that the case was moot.
The case ended without the disability rights community taking what many feared would be a loss because Laufer withdrew her lawsuit and the court ruled that the case was moot.
Increasingly, conservative jurists have shown hostility toward private citizens filing lawsuits to preserve a protected group’s rights. Last month, for example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit ruled that only the federal government, not individuals or groups, can sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a position that would effectively render the section meaningless. The ADA has no federal agency dedicated to enforcing the law, meaning it relies on private citizens filing lawsuits.
A ruling for Acheson would have significantly curtailed the ability of “testers” to file lawsuits through the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is one of the main ways that the law is enforced. The practice is fairly common. Organizations that seek to expose housing discrimination, for example, use testers. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that fair housing testers could sue under the Fair Housing Act, even if they never intended to purchase or rent a property.
While some companies have argued that it’s unfair to let testers file suits against establishments they never plan on using, people with disabilities say that…
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