If you’re not all in, you need to get out quickly. That seems to be a theme that runs through many of this week’s roundup of recent decisions. As we will see several times below, ADA lawsuits generally require a decision to surrender or fight to the death at the beginning of the case. Anything usually results in money wasted on attorneys’ fees. That said, defendants continue to succeed in some cases, justifying a close look at the particular court and its history before making a decision on how to proceed. More
ADA Attorney’s Fees
Quick Hits – Recent ADA and FHA Cases
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA Attorney's Fees, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA Litigation Procedure, ADA Mootness, ADA Point of Sale, ADA Vending Machines, ADA Web Access, FHA, FHA Reasonable Accommodation, Internet, Internet Accessibility Tags: ADA defense, ADA Mootness, ADA standing, FHA Defense, Readily Achievable, WCAG 2.0, website accessibility
We aren’t quite to Halloween, but the candy is certainly crowding the shelves of local stores, whose owners might want to take a look at Ryan v. Kohls, Inc., discussed below. Beyond that we have the usual roundup of default judgment cases, website accessibility standing cases, and of course some ordinary “drive-by” cases involving physical accessibility mixed in with cases that deserve special attention because they could have a broad impact on ADA and FHA litigation. Here they are. More
ADA website regulation – half empty, half full or just empty?
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA, ADA Attorney's Fees, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA Policies Tags: ADA regulations, ADA website, Department of Justice ADA Regulations, DOJ letter to Congress, Ted Budd
On September 25 the Department of Justice responded to a congressional plea for regulatory guidance with a firm “no.” In its letter to Congressman Ted Budd DOJ made it clear that it had no intention of restarting the regulatory process it abandoned last year and that it did not believe regulations were necessary or desirable. It did say that in the absence of regulation the failure to meet an industry standard like WCAG 2.0 AA is not necessarily proof of an ADA violation. This allows businesses to prove (if they can) that despite not meeting that or some other standard their business websites are accessible.
ADA and FHA Quick Hits – Labor Day edition.
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA Attorney's Fees, ADA Mootness, Animals, FHA Emotional Support Animals Tags: ADA defense, ADA Internet, ADA website, FHA Defense, FHA Guidelines, Glueck v National Conference of Bar Examiners, Hillesheim v Holiday Stationstores, mootness, service animals, Wetzel v Glen St. Andrew
Summer is almost over, but before I put away my flip flops and seer sucker suit here’s a last look at what has been a very busy summer in the field of ADA and FHA litigation.
Landlord liability for tenant discrimination
Wetzel v. Glen St. Andrew Living Community, LLC, 2018 WL 4057365 (7th Cir. Aug. 27, 2018) is a critically important decision for landlords because it holds a landlord may be liable for its failure to restrain discriminatory conduct by tenants. The plaintiff is a lesbian who found herself the subject of a “torrent” of abuse from fellow tenants based on her sexual orientation that included both verbal and physical assaults. The rules of the apartment complex were similar to those of most apartments and permitted the landlord to take action against any tenant whose conduct was a threat to the health and safety of others or interfered with the peaceful use and enjoyment of the apartments. The plaintiff reported the abuse to management, who did nothing about it. In fact, they engaged in various kinds of conduct that essentially punished the plaintiff for complaining. When the plaintiff finally sued under the Fair Housing Act the landlord’s defense was that it could not be held liable for discrimination by other tenants. More
Let’s celebrate the ADA’s 28th birthday with meaningful reform of a broken system.
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation, ADA Attorney's Fees, ADA Litigation Procedure, ADA regulations Tags: "drive-by" ADA lawsuits, ADA defense, ADA education, ADA Education and Reform Act, ADA enforcement, HR 620
Last week marked the 28th anniversary of passage of the ADA and for a brief time the disability law headlines in my Google News feed were celebratory. On ordinary days there are mostly two kinds of headlines. One group of headlines condemns serial or “drive-by” lawsuits as an unfair attack on innocent small businesses, using words like “extortion” and “hold-up.” The other suggests that any change to the current system of private enforcement of the ADA amounts to destroying it, saying for example that a requirement of pre-suit notice would “strip protections for Americans with disabilities granted under the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) of 1990.”* There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground, but it is worth asking whether either side is right.
Businesses sued under Title III of the ADA almost always have the same reaction. “I didn’t know I was violating the law.” Many businesses in older buildings still believe that they are “grandfathered” and don’t have to comply with the ADA, which is simply false. Others run afoul of the technical requirements in the 2010 Standards for Accessible Design, which differ from the earlier 1991 requirements and in many cases from what looks at first glance like a perfectly accessible parking space or door. In any case the business owner regards him or herself as innocent and while they are usually willing to fix the problem it seems unfair to pay their own lawyer and the lawyer who filed suit thousands of dollars. The pending legislation requiring pre-suit notices speaks to this feeling of unfairness by giving businesses a chance to fix the problem before they get sued.
The position of disability advocates on the other side boils down to two arguments. The first is that ignorance is no excuse with a law that has been in effect for 28 years now. The second is that the current sue first and give notice later is necessary because it more or less insures the lawyer will get paid. If pre-suit notice were required and businesses fixed their problems the lawyer would never get to file suit and would have no leverage to demand payment of fees. This, it is argued, would make attorneys turn to elsewhere to make money, leaving ADA enforcement up to the Department of Justice, which doesn’t have the time or resources to attack individual small businesses. Behind both arguments is often a good deal of anger about the still omnipresent barriers to access faced by those with disabilities.
The problem with the business argument is that it doesn’t address the fundamental problem – a failure of compliance. A few serial filers file frivolous lawsuits, but in the vast majority of cases the ADA violations are real and need to be fixed. In this respect disability advocates have a valid point. Twenty-eight years after the law was passed it should not be possible for me to find three strip shopping centers within a mile of my house that don’t meet ADA parking requirements, including one that redid its parking but did it wrong. The pending house bill, while it contains provisions for educating businesses about the ADA, explicitly refuses to provide new funding for that effort. Since the last 28 years of education have failed it is hard to see how a new educational effort without new money will succeed.
Unfortunately, the exact same problem applies to the arguments of disability advocates in favor of the current serial litigation system of enforcement. We’ve been doing it for 28 years with no sign that it is working. Despite the hoopla, the number of ADA lawsuits is tiny compared to the number of businesses with compliance issues, and most business owners will never be sued.* When it causes headlines serial litigation is educational, but that comes at the cost of creating hostility towards individuals with disabilities and the law itself, neither of which is likely to prompt voluntary changes in compliance. As a means of achieving widespread compliance with Title III, serial litigation has been a failure. The only real beneficiaries have been lawyers.
Why has Title III of the ADA failed, especially with small businesses? The primary reason seems to be ignorance. The ADA was passed 28 years ago, but small businesses come and go with the seasons. Unless a small business is reached when it is formed it may not exist long enough for word about the ADA to sink in, especially in communities that have not yet been hit by a high volume serial filer. Even in those communities the story makes headlines for a while and then disappears so that the next generation of owners will never hear of it. A second equally important reason is confusion. Most local building codes include some accessibility requirements, which can lead businesses to believe that their certificate of occupancy is a certificate of accessibility. Unfortunately local codes are less complete than the ADA in their requirements and in some cases requirements don’t match. For example, cities still using older versions of the International Building Code will impose parking space requirements that don’t meet current ADA standards. A business that has just paid fees for a city inspection is unlikely to understand it must also pay a private ADA expert to examine the property for compliance issues the city missed. A final reason is money. Modifications cost money and the tax credits available for ADA compliance work don’t apply to buildings constructed after 1991 even though many non-compliant buildings have been built since 1991.
Given these problems real ADA reform; that is, reform that seeks to improve ADA compliance and avoid often unfair ADA lawsuits should include these components:
- A system for making sure every new small business is informed of its ADA obligations. This shouldn’t be hard since such businesses already interact with the IRS and data on business formation is readily available from the states. It will require money, but if the goals of the ADA are worth achieving it is worth the expense.
- A grace period during which new small businesses can remediate older premises to make them comply with ADA standards. A new business that knows it has six months, but no more, to become ADA compliant will have a meaningful deadline in which to act.
- A tax credit for both inspection and remediation that applies to all remediation regardless of the age of the building. Congress was far too optimistic when it assumed that all new construction would comply with ADA standards and that only older buildings would require remediation.
- A provision that treats compliance with local accessibility requirements as sufficient when they overlap the requirements of the ADA. This would avoid the trap faced by businesses that are lead to believe they are compliant because they meet local code requirements.
- Provisions for pre-suit notice in private litigation similar to HB 620, but accompanied by funding for DOJ enforcement and education actions. DOJ enforcement has a huge advantage over private enforcement because DOJ does not collect attorneys’ fees. This means that money is not diverted to lawyers that could be better used for remediation.
These sensible reforms would undoubtedly face opposition from businesses that don’t want DOJ enforcement, from tax hawks who hate paying for federal mandates and from the well-heeled plaintiffs’ bar that has a vested interest in making sure most businesses remain open targets for litigation. Nonetheless, it is clearly time to fix an ADA enforcement mechanism that has failed to create the kind of accessibility that was the purpose of the ADA while aggravating businesses and making lawyers rich. Twenty-eight years of failure is enough.
* From On the Anniversary of the ADA, Demand That Lawmakers Defend Our Care.
** Website lawsuits may be an exception. They are so easy to file and the numbers are rising so quickly that any businesses with a significant internet presence has a real risk of being sued.