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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30380 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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In Accessibility law, this is the realm of ADA testers and their lawyers: a very small group of people who promise that they're at least theoretically interested in going to a far larger space of public or semi-public accommodations and making sure that anyone with similar disabilities can access them (and not coincidentally make a lot of money), who individually have hundreds or low thousands of complaints or even lawsuits.

There is a SCOTUS case coming on this. Last month the Supreme Court elected to take up an appeal from a 1st Circuit case questioning whether a self-appointed ADA "tester" has standing to sue for damages in federal court if they never intend to actually visit the place they're "testing":

The plaintiff, Deborah Laufer, has brought 600 lawsuits against hotels around the United States. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, hotels are required to make information about their accessibility to people with disabilities available on reservation portals. In this case, Laufer – who has physical disabilities and vision impairments – went to federal court in Maine, where she alleged that a website for an inn that Acheson Hotels operates in that state did not contain enough information about the inn’s accommodations for people with disabilities.

The district court threw out her lawsuit. It agreed with Acheson Hotels that Laufer did not have standing because she had no plans to visit the hotel and therefore was not injured by the lack of information on the website. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit reinstated Laufer’s lawsuit.

That prompted Acheson Hotels to come to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to weigh in. The company pointed to a division among the courts of appeals on whether cases like Laufer’s can move forward; indeed, Acheson Hotels noted, courts have reached different conclusions about whether Laufer can bring these kinds of cases. And the issue has “immense practical importance,” the company stressed, describing a “cottage industry” “in which uninjured plaintiffs lob ADA lawsuits of questionable merit, while using the threat of attorney’s fees to extract settlement payments.”

Laufer agreed that review was warranted, although she urged the justices to uphold the lower court’s ruling. The justices will likely hear argument in the case in the fall, with a decision to follow sometime in 2024.

The plaintiff, Deborah Laufer, has brought 600 lawsuits against hotels around the United States. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, hotels are required to make information about their accessibility to people with disabilities available on reservation portals.

What an absolutely loathsome person. Anyone with a shred of common decency would just call and ask whatever question they had about the hotel if it was a genuine question, but nope, the goal here is entirely to antagonize anyone that doesn't comply with Byzantine rules on their websites. Laufer acts more like a misaligned AI than a person that honestly wants to make the world a better place.

Even the blind and wheelchair bound need to make a living. Even if it’s parasitic and something a sane society wouldn’t consider a job.

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