The Supreme Court on Wednesday argued over the question of whether a disability rights activist could sue a hotel for violating a federal disability law, even if she never planned to stay there.
Several judges were skeptical about the case itself and whether there was even a dispute to resolve.
“This is like dead, dead, dead, in every sense that something can be dead,” Justice Elena Kagan said during an argument that lasted about an hour and a half. “Using that case as a vehicle to decide an important issue, an issue that will probably need to be decided at some point but that could surely come up in a live case, I guess just doesn’t seem like something a court should be eager to do.”
Activist Deborah Laufer, a Florida woman diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, had sued an inn on the southern coast of Maine, alleging that it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, a civil rights law that requires hotels to disclose accessibility information. .
Laufer is what is known as a “tester,” a self-proclaimed person who questions companies for violations of the law. According to court documents, he has filed more than 600 lawsuits on the issue. These challenges typically require a company to admit that it broke the law and then fix the problem, in addition to paying legal fees.
The question is whether such evaluators can force companies to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act even if they never planned to visit the company. Although the question presented is narrow, the decision could have broader implications for other types of test cases, including those involving housing discrimination.
However, Ms. Laufer asked the court to dismiss the case. The hotel is now under new ownership and its website has been updated to reflect handicap accommodations.
After Justice Kagan expressed skepticism that the court should devote more resources to a case that is no longer in dispute, Adam G. Unikowsky, the hotel’s attorney, responded.
If the court does not decide this case, he said, the same situation would arise repeatedly in lower federal courts. That led Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to suggest that perhaps the court could “simply wait until the issue arises again.”
A government lawyer echoed that approach, arguing that the case was moot.
“Not only do we have a plaintiff who is no longer seeking to litigate his claims, a defendant who no longer owns the hotel, but also a website that is no longer missing relevant information,” said Erica L. Ross, assistant attorney general. .
However, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. expressed skepticism about the tactics Ms. Laufer had used.
If the court dismisses the case, he said, “it won’t stop any of the other dozens of people, however many, who are doing the same thing.”
Several of the justices focused on hypotheses aimed at understanding parallels between Ms. Laufer’s actions as a disability evaluator and a well-known 1982 Supreme Court decision involving black examiners.
Then, Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, the court upheld a broad definition of who could sue landlords for violations of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, based on a case in which a white and a black reviewer responded to an apartment ad. The black woman was told there were no vacant rooms, while the white man was told there were apartments available.
Judge Jackson raised an analogy with blacks who challenged segregated lunch counters and asked whether Ms. Laufer was experiencing such discrimination when she looked to see if hotels accounted for their accessibility.
“They’re not really there for the sandwich,” Judge Jackson said. “They are coming in because they are putting themselves in a discriminatory situation to be able to challenge the policy.”
Judge Jackson questioned whether Ms. Laufer’s situation was similar.
“Are you really experiencing discrimination?” she said. “Is that what we’re supposed to think about?”
If judges rule broadly and decide that evaluators cannot bring such lawsuits, it could have serious consequences, according to legal experts and housing advocates.
“The implications are profound,” said Morgan Williams, general counsel for the National Fair Housing Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on compliance and enforcement of fair housing laws. “Withholding could be fundamentally destructive to what we do to enforce the Fair Housing Act.”
The case, Acheson Hotels v. Laufer, No. 22-429It started in September 2020, when Ms. Laufer sued Acheson Hotelsthe operator of Coast Village Inn and Cottages, a small hotel in Wells, Maine.
In the lawsuit, Ms. Laufer, who uses a wheelchair, accused Coast Village Inn and Cottages of violating federal regulations that require hotels to disclose information about accessible rooms on their websites.
In her complaint, Laufer said she was not planning to stay at the Maine hotel but was an evaluator, someone who investigates whether hotels comply with federal disability laws. She asked the federal court to order the hotel to change its online reservation system to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and pay legal fees.
Laufer later amended his lawsuit to say he also planned to drive from Florida to Maine to meet his sister and accompany his granddaughter to several stops, including tourist attractions. By omitting information about accommodations for people with disabilities, he argued, the hotel had infringed on his “right to travel without discrimination.”
The district court dismissed his case, finding that he lacked the right to bring a legal claim, a legal term known as standing. It was “implausible” that Laufer planned to visit Maine, the judge wrote, adding that he could not prove “concrete harm.”
The Boston-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit overturned that decision, pointing to the Supreme Court’s 1982 ruling.
The hotel asked the Supreme Court to take up the case and questioned Ms. Laufer’s motives for filing the lawsuit.
In their petition, the hotel’s lawyers described the case as one of “immense practical importance” adding that Ms. Laufer was one of many evaluators who “collectively have filed thousands of claims under the ADA.”
“A cottage industry has emerged in which uninjured plaintiffs launch ADA lawsuits of questionable merit, while using the threat of attorney fees to obtain settlement payments,” the attorneys wrote. “These lawsuits have burdened small businesses, clogged the court system, and undermined the executive branch’s exclusive authority to enforce federal law.”
In July, Ms. Laufer’s lawyers had asked the court to dismiss the case as moot. They said she had voluntarily dropped her case against the hotel after a federal court in Maryland sanctioned a lawyer who represented her.
Lawyers for the hotel asked the court to move forward with the case and the justices, in an unsigned order, agreed. They noted that the question of whether the case was arguable could be considered during oral arguments.
