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.
they’re just trying to amass money from settlements
5-4 Pod covered this on the linked episode. The discussion of the case starts around 51:20. But, no, there’s no money to made here. The testers identify non-compliance and then the hotel gets sued. That almost always means the hotel settles to become compliant; they just fix the problem.
They also address the idea of it being government’s job to enforce to enforce the ADA? How? Where do the resources come from? There’s no money to be made here because the business just fixes the problem. It’s purely a drain on government resources to enforce the ADA. But if testers can’t sue for non-compliance then the effectiveness of the ADA plummets: it basically becomes an unenforceable law.
Granted, these aren’t legal arguments. They’re based on the reality of what happens and will happen if testers can’t sue, should the Supreme Court decide that.
But, no, there’s no money to made here.
Legally, except in some states like Cali where they get 4k a case…
And one of her past lawyers was using illegal means to make money off this:
Laufer’s own legal representation in other ADA cases represents one way this system can be abused. Her former lawyer Gillespie was suspended for six months for allegedly exaggerating the number of hours he worked on her cases, inflating the amount he was able to take from the defendants through legal fees. This is the same misconduct cited by Laufer’s current lawyer, Kelsi Brown Corkran, in their effort to have the Supreme Court case dismissed. It is unclear how common this issue is.
https://19thnews.org/2023/10/supreme-court-acheson-laufer-americans-with-disabilities-act/
Do we know if she got kickbacks from her lawyer doing that? Nope. Maybe that lawyer was just shady and she didn’t know/care.
But it would explain why she’s trying to get a recent case thrown out, and the people she sued are trying to take it to court.
Usually the defendant would be happy their case was dismissed
