This is just a quick note about a major development in the story concerning thousands of lawsuits filed in Arizona by a purported disability rights group. The attorney involved, Peter Strojnik was mentioned in two of my blogs earlier this year. The Economist covers serial ADA litigation – Hunt quoted and Cheap Standing under the ADA. After investigations by the press and local authorities the head of the plaintiff organization has resigned and the Arizona Attorney General has intervened in an effort to shut down the litigation mill. You can read the most recent in a series of stories by Steven Trotten HERE and read the Motion to Intervene HERE. More
Good news for the Fair Housing Act: TWC puts a dent in dialing for dollars
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA FHA General, ADA FHA Litigation General, Apartments, FHA, FHA Reasonable Accommodation, Reasonable accommodation Tags: City Vision, dialing for dollars, Fair Housing Advocates, HUD complaint, Patrick Coleman, Texas Workforce Commission
I’ve written before about the dialing for dollars phenomenon in Fair Housing Act claims (click here) and about how cheap standing facilitates litigation aimed more at profit than progress (click here). There is good news on both fronts from the Texas Workforce Commission, which recently dismissed several FHA complaints because the organization that filed them, a private corporation called Fair Housing Advocates, could not demonstrate it had standing. Fair Housing Advocates is operated by Patrick Coleman, one of the two owners of City Vision, a similar organization devoted to making money by means of HUD complaints. Citi Vision appears to have abandoned the dialing for dollars business earlier this year, probably because TWC started dismissing its complaints for lack of standing. More
Does DOJ’s new definition of disability matter? Maybe.
By Richard Hunt in ADA, ADA FHA Legislation, ADA Policies, ADA regulations, ADA rulemaking, ADA Web Access Tags: ADA regulations, ADA rulemaking, definition disabled, Department of Justice
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.
By Richard Hunt in ADA, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation, ADA FHA Legislation, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA Miniature Horses, ADA regulations, ADA rulemaking, ADA service animals, DOJ, Uncategorized Tags: ADA service animals, miniature horses, service animals
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
You can’t agree to what you can’t read – the perils of clickwrap when the ADA is involved.
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA Class Actions, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA Point of Sale, ADA Web Access, Internet, Internet Accessibility, Retail Tags: ADA arbitration, ADA Class Action, Container Store, National Federation of the Blind, Point of Sale, POS terminal
This week’s decision in Nat’l Fed’n of the Blind v. Container Store, Inc., 2016 WL 4027711 (D. Mass. July 27, 2016) is a call to action for every business that uses a click to accept type license or other agreements. Such agreements may not be enforceable in an ADA context unless special care is taken.
The case involved the Container Store’s loyalty program, which provides various perks and rewards. Customers could sign up when making a purchase at a store or online. In either case the process included clicking an “I Accept” button linked to the usual boilerplate terms and conditions, which included an agreement to arbitrate. The problem? Container Stores use a touchscreen Point of Sale device that is not accessible to the blind because it has no tactile controls. I blogged about the issue here, and the problem hasn’t gone away. The argument is straightforward. Blind customers cannot use the devices without giving personal information about their credit card information and email address to the clerk, while sighted customers can preserve their privacy on these matters. More