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.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that there should be an intermediate step.
That’s just a problem for Congress to solve, not the Court. The Court is not going to add that step in (nor does it appear the Defendants have asked for that). Congress could end this woman’s trail of lawsuits
tomorrowas soon as the House picks a new Speaker.What the Defendants are arguing is that because she had no intention of staying at the hotel, there is no harm. If you buy into that, then by the same principle, someone who inquires about an apartment to prove that a landlord is racially discriminating can have no standing because they weren’t actually looking to move at that time. I know you probably don’t see those as the same, but that’s the concept the Defendants are arguing against.