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Supreme Court to consider whether Americans with Disabilities Act 'tester' can sue hotels for non-compliance with the law (www.cnn.com)

submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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The Supreme Court will consider the strength of the Americans with Disabilities Act on Wednesday when it hears a dispute over whether a self-appointed “tester” of the civil rights law has the right to sue hotels over alleged violations of its provisions.

How the justices rule could have a significant impact on the practical effectiveness of the landmark legislation, which aims to shield individuals with disabilities from discrimination in public accommodations and a host of other settings.

At the center of the dispute is Deborah Laufer, a disability rights advocate who has brought hundreds of lawsuits against hotels she says are not in compliance with ADA rules requiring hotels to disclose information about how accessible they are to individuals with disabilities.

Laufer, a Florida resident who uses a wheelchair and has a visual impairment, doesn’t intend to visit the hotels she’s suing. Instead, the complaints are made in an effort to force the hotels to update their websites to be in compliance with the law. Legal experts say the strategy, known as “testing,” is necessary to ensure enforcement of the historic law.

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[-] SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

It's strange reading about this. Once upon a time when I did insurance for hotels and motels there was a disabled lawyer who would file claims for hotels being out of ADA compliance.

He would travel all over and stay at random hotels in their handicap accessible room and proceed to measure everything. Door frame widths, toilet heights, diameter of the handlebars in the shower, the exact angle of the zero entry showers, height difference between outside and inside of the door. Everything.

Then he would fax us these 50pg+ claims requesting compensation for everything that wasn't exactly in compliance. Usually this was after attempting to shakedown the owner/manager of the hotel. We would file the claim with the company and send the info to the agent telling them to talk with their client and get the compliance issues fixed.

After a while we started to also get claims where hotels would refuse him service because they knew who he was. The agents were warning their clients about him.

Far as I know the companies never paid a dime and just referred him to the ADA and denied the claims. They never said it outright but they would have preferred the hotels just binned the claims in lieu of filing them but understood why they didn't.

this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023

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