red mushroom on background of rocks

Fall mushrooms are beautiful, but also potentially poisonous, which is a real stretch for an analogy to the disability protection provisions of the ADA and FHA. Here’s a roundup of the latest decisions.

Website accessibility – let’s review

Roman v. Greenwich Village Dental Arts P.C., 2022 WL 4226026 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 13, 2022) isn’t an extraordinary case, but it is a reminder that the law of website accessibility remains fractured. In this case the plaintiff’s only claim was that as a blind person he could not use the website of defendant dental office. He does not appear to have alleged he wanted to actually have work done on his teeth, just that he wanted to use the website. The Court recognized that some 2nd Circuit courts require that a website have a nexus with a physical business to be covered by Title III of the ADA, but held that because this website was associated with a physical business there was no doubt about coverage.  With that we can consider the various views:
  • Websites are covered by Title III of the ADA only as a service or means of communication for a physical place of business. That nexus requirement implies that to suffer an ADA injury from an inaccessible website the plaintiff must be seeking the goods and services offered by the physical business.
  • Websites are covered by Title III of the ADA when associated with a physical place of business, but a plaintiff can suffer an ADA injury from being denied access to the website regardless of whether they seek the goods and services of the physical business.
  • Websites are public accommodations covered by Title III of the ADA regardless of whether they are associated with a physical place of business, so a denial of access necessarily causes the plaintiff to suffer an ADA injury.

The first and third choices have their own logic, but the middle one makes no sense at all. An ADA injury arises when the plaintiff is denied access to the goods and services of a public accommodation. If the plaintiff has no interest in those goods and services then a denial of access causes no injury.² Decisions like  Roman v Greenwich Village Dental do nothing to help those with disabilities who might need access to the goods and services of a business but do help lawyers get rich and create the legal atmosphere in which some plaintiffs’ lawyers don’t bother with having a real plaintiff (see Antonini v. Nieves below). After all, if you don’t need a real injury to maintain a suit under Title III of the ADA why bother having a real person as plaintiff?

Speaking of fees . . . 

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