- If you think reopening a retail business with new distancing rules is a challenge, wait till you see the interplay with the ADA, as I explain in my new post at Cato;
- Court dismisses class action against Wendy’s on behalf of disabled persons unable to use after-hours drive-up service as a walk-up [Davis v. Wendy’s International, a pre-pandemic case; earlier here, here, and here on ADA complaints regarding drive up windows]
- “Why is subway accessibility so expensive? It’s not just about installing new elevators.” [Annie McDonough, City and State NY]
- “After DOJ Letter on Website Compliance, The ADA Guessing Game Continues” [John D. McMickle, WLF] ADA filing mills hit condo and co-op boards [Frank Lovece, Habitat] Serial plaintiff files web access suit against Vermont bicycle maker [Bicycle Retailer]
- Limousine service to pay $30,000 for refusing to hire deaf driver [EEOC press release]
- Colorado homeowner’s association told to pay $50,000 after failing to allow woman to stay in the complex with her emotional support dog [Associated Press] “Do We Have to Allow Dogs in Our Workplace? Maybe. Maybe Not.” [Daniel Schwartz] Trucking company will pay $22,500 after asking driver to pay fee to bring service dog along in truck to help with his anxiety [EEOC press release]
Posts Tagged ‘service animals’
ADA and disabled rights roundup
- I’ve expanded the previous post in this space on Braille gift cards into a longer Cato post with a bit more on the politics and history of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), mentioning along the way the recent closure of a popular San Jose coffee shop [Nadia Lopez, San Jose Spotlight; another San Jose deli story] Speaking of such happenings, “He says the suit could mean the end of the restaurant. ‘We would rather just close down if we have to pay that absurd amount of money,’ he says.” [Rancho Vegano in New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood; Michael Scotto, NY1 Spectrum News]
- “It’s about time! New rule could have emotional support animals bumped from planes” [Lynn Norment, Memphis Commercial Appeal; Wes Siler, Outside; David Koenig, AP]
- Videos on leading pornographic websites “lack enough closed captioning, claims the class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of all deaf and hard-of-hearing people.” [Noah Goldberg, New York Daily News]
- “Federal Website Access Lawsuit Numbers Increase 7 Percent in 2019, With Possible Bump from Supreme Court Denial of Cert in Domino’s” [Kristina M. Launey and Minh N. Vu, Seyfarth Shaw; Vu on related litigation trends in 2019]
- “White students in New York City are 10 times as likely as Asian students to have a 504 designation that allows extra time on the specialized high school entrance exams.” [Kevin Quealy and Eliza Shapiro, New York Times; Dana Goldstein and Jugal K. Patel, New York Times (“it helps to have cash” in getting pricey psychological assessments in Southern California); Education Next (“number of high school students being given special allowances for test-taking, such as extra time, has surged in recent years” with students in affluent suburbs more likely to get them)]
- “Law firms settle suit accusing them of civil RICO conspiracy to collect ADA settlements” [Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal; Moore and Mission law firms, California; KGO/ABC7News on some Bay Area cases]
ADA and disabled rights roundup
- Supreme Court declines review in Domino’s case, so no resolution is in sight of what and how much the ADA may require about web accessibility [Tucker Higgins, CNBC; Corbin Barthold, Law and Liberty; earlier]
- NYC co-ops, condos targeted: “These lawyers have one handicapped client, and they go with this person from building to building with commercial spaces.” [Marianne Schaefer, Habitat magazine] Related: John Egan, Seyfarth Shaw;
- “Airline’s Provision of Alternative Accessible Website Triggers Hefty Fine Under the Air Carrier Access Act” [Kristina M. Launey & Minh N. Vu, Seyfarth Shaw last winter]
- “A handy FAQ for service animals in the workplace” [Jon Hyman]
- “Thus far, these serial cases appear [more] designed to extract a quick settlement than rectify a real harm, as evidenced by the choice of plaintiff,” who couldn’t actually join credit union but sued anyway [Hollie Ferguson, Legal NewsLine] “Federal judge deals body blow to attorney at center of serial ADA lawsuits” [Casmira Harrison, Daytona Beach News-Journal; Minh Vu, Seyfarth Shaw]
- Law School Admissions Test will be doing away with its analytical reasoning portion, also known as logic problems, after a blind plaintiff sued saying it “it wasn’t fair for visually impaired people because the most common way to solve the problems was to draw diagrams and pictures.” [Cheyna Roth, Michigan Radio (NPR)]
Disabled rights roundup
- Housing authority in Meeker, Colorado, population 2,250, will pay nearly $1 million to settle suit over limits on emotional support animals [Niki Turner, Rio Blanco Herald-Times, Kathleen Foody, Associated Press/Colorado Sun, Stina Sieg, Colorado Public Radio]
- Volume of web-accessibility suits continues to climb [Seyfarth Shaw; John Breslin, Florida Record] More on growth of this litigation [podcast with Karen Harned, NFIB, for Federalist Society Regulatory Transparency Project (earlier on pool lifts)] “DOJ Says Failure to Comply With Web Accessibility Guidelines is Not Necessarily a Violation of the ADA” [Minh Vu, Seyfarth Shaw, from last October] Second Circuit dismissal of web-access complaint in Diaz v. Apple, Inc. could be helpful to defendants [Joshua Stein and Shira Blank, National Law Review]
- Report on ADA filing mills in Rochester and vicinity [Berkeley Brean, WHEC: first, second, third (colleges), fourth, fifth]
- And more on New York mass filing operations: Inveterate suer of restaurants reaches Staten Island [Pamela Silvestri, SI Live] Finger Lakes wineries targeted [Jane Flasch/WHAM in February; Michael J. Fitzgerald, Finger Lakes Times] “Finkelstein has gone on a lawsuit-filing spree since getting his law license back in New York state in 2016,” and among his 50 ADA suits are some the named plaintiff says he didn’t know about [Julia Marsh, New York Post]
- In EEOC-land no one can hear you honk [press release on EEOC lawsuit against limo service that declined to hire deaf driver]
- “Washington Supreme Court Says Obesity Is a Disability” [Ben McDonald, and thanks for quote; earlier]
Emotional support, therapy and companion dogs in court
“As dogs and other animals are increasingly used in courts to comfort and calm prosecution witnesses, a few voices are calling for keeping the practice on a short leash, saying they could bias juries.” [AP/WTOP]
June 13 roundup
- Put a Plimsoll line on a T-shirt and you might hear from trademark lawyers [Cyrus Farivar, ArsTechnica]
- “Do Landlords Have a Duty to Evict Drug-Using Tenants (or Face Liability if Guests Die When Using Drugs with Them)?” [Eugene Volokh]
- Interview with Judge Jeffrey Sutton about his new book on state constitutions, “51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law” [Ilya Somin, parts one and two] Federalist Society teleforum with Judge Sutton, Randy Barnett, and Judge William Pryor;
- “American Airlines bans insects, hedgehogs and goats as emotional support animals” [CNNMoney/WQAD] Peacocks begone: “JetBlue Updates Requirements for Emotional Support Animals” [press release]
- Gov. Hogan vs. teachers’ unions, pension mandate, a socialist for MoCo County Executive?, and more in my latest Maryland roundup [Free State Notes]
- “A Devastated Puerto Rico Must Still Contend with the Jones Act” [Cato Podcast with Colin Grabow and Caleb Brown, earlier]
March 7 roundup
- What’s worse than undermining Section 230, charter of Internet freedom? Turning it all into a pinata for trial lawyers [No go, NRO; earlier on SESTA and FOSTA] Carve-out to Section 230 in name of fighting sex trafficking could erode protection for other businesses against being sued [WSJ editorial] More: Karol Markowicz;
- “If You Owe the IRS Over $51,000, It Can Trap You in the United States” [Brian Doherty, Reason]
- How far can a theft ring go in stealing a rental vehicle before the police step in? [related Twitter threads, Sharky Laguana and Noah Lehmann-Haupt]
- “Federalism as a Check on Executive Authority,” panel at Federalist Society 2017 Annual Texas Chapters Conference with Caitlin Halligan, Scott Keller, Ernest Young, moderated by Hon. Jeff Brown [video]
- Revisiting an auto scare: “Will the Corvair Kill You?” [Larry Webster, Hagerty, earlier here and here]
- No, peacocks-in-the-airline-cabin isn’t really some failure of “fetishizing [individualism over] communal well-being.” It’s a failure of collectivized legal compulsion overriding contract and choice [David Leonhardt, New York Times; Elizabeth Preske, Travel and Leisure on underlying episode; earlier on emotional-support and other service animals]
Delta: no more free-for-all on service animals
Following a series of safety incidents that included the mauling of a passenger last year by a 70-pound dog, Delta Air Lines has tightening its onboard policies on emotional support and other service animals, requiring additional documentation of their role and training and excluding some species altogether, including “‘farm poultry,’ hedgehogs and anything with tusks.” [Karin Brulliard, Washington Post/PennLive; earlier here, here, etc.] The carrier said there had been “a 150 percent increase in the number of service and support animals carried onboard since 2015.” [Alana Wise/Reuters] Employers are bracing for a rising number of demands to let employees bring service animals with them into the workplace, with the likes of the EEOC litigating in support [Patrick Dorrian, BNA/Bloomberg, earlier] And New York has joined a number of other states in passing a law against service animal fraud. [Kevin Fritz and John Egan, Seyfarth Shaw]
Service animal news: when pigs fly
Passenger asked to leave US Airways flight after emotional support pig becomes disruptive [Rheana Murray, ABC News] “Florida man fights eviction over ’emotional support squirrel'” [Fox News] “Student sues university (and wins) for ADA violations over service dog in sorority house” [Amanda Watts and AnneClaire Stapleton, CNN]
ADA and the workplace roundup
- “Can Fido Come to Work? EEOC Files Suit to Require Emotional Support Dog on Truck Route” [James M. Paul, Ogletree Deakins] “Someone brought a $@&@?! therapy duck into Iowa Law School.” [Prof. @andygrewal, with picture]
- EEOC sues Dollar General, alleges medical exams and questions violate ADA, GINA [Courtney Bru, McAfee & Taft]
- “My only surprise is that these kind of [ADA vs. NFL] suits don’t happen more often.” [William Goren, Understanding the ADA on Erin Henderson v. New York Jets LLC]
- When Addressing a Workers’ Comp Claim, Don’t Forget FMLA (and ADA)… [Janette Frisch on Zuber v. Boscov’s, Third Circuit]
- “Lucky Employer Skates on ADA Liability: Complaints about Noisy Workplace Not Enough to Put Employer on Notice of Need for ADA Accommodation” [Marti Cardi and Gail Cohen,
Matrix Radar] - “The ADA: Four issues to watch in 2018” [Robin Shea, Constangy]