The Department of Justice and Housing and Urban Development have just issued a guidance document concerning sober homes and other types of group living arrangements. It should help provide some clarity to cities and towns still wrestling with issues related to group living after decades of litigation. At the same, however, the document reminds us of the sobering reality that the Department of Justice and Housing and Urban Development believe they are above the law in their roles as advocates for the disabled, and will not hesitate to use their essentially unlimited resources to litigate intellectually unsustainable positions. More
ADA FHA Legislation
Does DOJ’s new definition of disability matter? Maybe.
On August 11, 2016 the Department of Justice finally issued its regulations implementing the expanded definition of disability contained in the 2008 Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments. The actual content of the regulations, which apply to Titles II and III of the ADA, will already be familiar to most businesses because they are intended to be consistent with the EEOC’s 2011 regulations implementing the 2008 ADAA for Title I. Equally important, they appear after eight long years of lawsuits brought under the 2008 ADAA in which the courts and litigants had to wrestle with the meaning of the statute. More
Is this a service animal under the ADA?* What Arizona can teach the Department of Justice.
Reading the daily update I get on disability law issues I was struck by this sentence from an article published on August 8 in the Daily Courier from Prescott Arizona:
“The Arizona Legislature altered laws this year that govern those service animals, specifically allowing businesses, especially restaurants, to tell an owner the animal must be removed if it is out of control or not housebroken.”
(Click here for complete article). This is interesting because the “altered law” does not appear to change anything. Under both the ADA and its Arizona equivalent businesses have always been entitled to exclude service animals that are out of control or not housebroken. Other details in the new law are also consistent with existing federal regulations concerning service animals. More
Who’s on first? Shifting burdens in ADA accessibility litigation
There is nothing the Supreme Court loves more in a discrimination case than a set of shifting burdens of production, persuasion, proof, or whatever other word starting in “p” the Court thinks will describe complicating the analysis of a discrimination case. It proved this recently in Young v. United Parcel Service, a pregnancy discrimination case, but the process goes back to McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Greene, a race discrimination case decided in 1973. The McDonnell Douglas waltz goes like this: plaintiff has to make a preliminary showing of discrimination, the defendant has to show that it had a non-discriminatory reason, and then the plaintiff has to prove the defendant was really motivated by discriminatory feelings. By way of contrast an ordinary lawsuit just puts a single burden on the plaintiff; that is, prove the defendant did something wrong. The McDonnell Douglas waltz guarantees that discrimination litigation will be more complex, time-consuming and expensive than an ordinary lawsuit. More
Animal Crackers and Alphabet Soup — ADA, FHA, ACAA, Arghhhh
There was a flurry of comment recently among the community of disability lawyers when a legal blogger posted a story about a pig allowed on an airplane with disastrous results. The story was interesting, but what caught the attention of those who practice in the field of disability law was his error in the law that applied. He said it was a story about ADA service animals, when in fact, as experts know, the issue was one under the Air Carrier Access Act.
I can’t blame him, or anyone else, for being confused. Even putting aside the dozens of state disability rights laws and the hundreds or thousands of municipal ordinances there are still a confusing array of federal laws and standards that might apply to any given business, and the rules about animals are particularly likely to cause confusion. Here is the briefest of explanations about where you and your business stand. More