The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard a case involving a disabled woman who has filed lawsuits across the country claiming hotels are not complying with laws to provide access for disabled people.
Critics say the woman shouldn’t be able to bring the lawsuits, given that she doesn’t intend to stay at the hotels. They say she lacks standing, meaning a clear legal injury. Others say a ruling against her would be a blow to civil rights for disabled individuals.
Deborah Laufer, the disabled Florida woman at the heart of the legal battle, has made a career out of the Americans with Disabilities Act by surfing the internet to find hotels she says don’t meet the law’s standards for online information about accommodations for disabled patrons. She has filed more than 600 complaints against hotels, reached settlements and then collected costs and attorneys’ fees.
Opponents say her string of lawsuits is a cash grab. One lower court judge said it would have been impossible for her to stay at all the locations detailed in her suits and sanctioned one of her lawyers for filing the complaints.
Remarkably, Ms. Laufer asked the Supreme Court not to hear her latest case — a challenge to a chain of hotels in Maine that refused to settle. She said she would dismiss the lawsuit in lower court.
But the high court declined her request and heard the dispute Wednesday.
Adam Unikowsky, an attorney representing the Maine hotel, urged the justices to rule against Ms. Laufer, who has become known as a “tester” looking to enforce ADA compliance, because she didn’t plan to stay at the hotel.
Additionally, he said the court should be concerned about a plaintiff filing hundreds of lawsuits without intent to follow through with the alleged injury he or she claims to suffer.
“She hasn’t promised not to bring new suits in the future,” Mr. Unikowsky said Wednesday. “The court should have institutional concerns.”
“The court should not bless a legal strategy of filing large numbers of lawsuits, settling almost all of them, and abandoning the rare case that threatens to create adverse precedent so as to facilitate the filing of another round of lawsuits,” he added.
Kelsi Brown Corkran, an attorney representing Ms. Laufer, said her client is facing a “dignitary harm” when she can’t access information on travel websites about accommodations for disabled people.
“You’re not getting the information for a reason that conveys you have inferior status in society. So it’s inflicting a dignitary harm that you wouldn’t have from a purely informational injury,” Ms. Corkran said. “She is invisible.”
Erica Ross, an attorney with the Justice Department, told the justices the case is “unusual” and should be moot because Ms. Laufer has dismissed her initial complaint against Acheson Hotels, ownership of the chain has changed hands and the website has since been updated to comply with the ADA.
“We have not only a plaintiff who no longer seeks to litigate her claims, a defendant who no longer owns the hotel, but also a website that is no longer lacking the relevant information,” Ms. Ross said.
The justices on the court’s liberal wing signaled they agreed with that argument.
“This is, like, dead, dead, dead in all the ways that something can be dead,” said Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee.
“Why isn’t that just the end of it?” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and some of his fellow GOP-appointees expressed an interest to settle the issue.
“I’m as concerned as anybody about our workload, but … it’s a difficult question as to whether or not somebody, particularly when you have a program of litigation like this around the country by people who may or may not have standing, can manipulate the court’s jurisdiction,” the chief justice said.
Julianna Acheson, owner of Acheson Hotels LLC, pursued the case despite Ms. Laufer moving to withdraw the challenge against her former hotel chain. Ms. Acheson owned Acheson at the time Ms. Laufer launched the lawsuit but has since sold it.
According to court filings, Ms. Laufer said she lost her job after a multiple sclerosis diagnosis, developed depression and had difficulty traveling because hotels did not provide access for her wheelchair in violation of the ADA.
After learning she could work toward ensuring ADA compliance, she took the opportunity to help others, according to her court declaration.
“Serving as an ADA plaintiff helped get me out of my depression because it allowed me to help myself and other people,” she said in a declaration. Ms. Laufer said she did not file the ADA cases to make money.
The case is Acheson Hotels v. Deborah Laufer. A decision is expected by the end of June.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires public establishments to make reasonable accommodations for disabled people to access their services and facilities. A provision compels hotel owners to describe features at the establishment for people with disabilities.
Ms. Laufer, who has impaired vision and needs a cane or wheelchair for mobility, said Coast Village Inn and Cottages, an Acheson Hotels property, did not list accessible rooms on its website and doesn’t provide enough information to determine whether she could be accommodated. She said that violates her rights under the ADA.
A U.S. District Court sided with Acheson Hotels, saying Ms. Laufer wasn’t planning to be a customer and therefore didn’t have standing to sue. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, finding that withholding the information amounted to harm to Ms. Laufer and gave her legal standing to sue.
Other district and circuit courts have ruled the other way, creating the sort of split that makes a case attractive for the Supreme Court.
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this story.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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