SAN DIEGO (Legal Newsline) - A California appeals court rejected a lawsuit by serial plaintiffs who claimed a website discriminated against them by failing to provide proper access to the blind, ruling the Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t cover websites.
“We conclude the ADA unambiguously applies only to physical places, California’s Fourth Appellate Court stated in a Sept. 13 decision.
The ruling was another loss for Pacific Trial Attorneys, a law firm that has filed hundreds of lawsuits against businesses over alleged violations of the ADA and California’s Unruh Act, which also prohibits discrimination against disabled consumers. Plaintiffs Dominick Martin and Rusty Rendon, who have appeared in multiple Pacific Trial Attorneys cases, sued Thi E-Commerce with claims its websites were incompatible with screen reading software.
A trial court dismissed the case and the plaintiffs appealed. But they got no further with the Fourth District, which upheld the dismissal in an opinion by Division Three Justice Maurice Sanchez.
Pacific Trial Attorneys argued the ADA covers any “place of public accommodation” including websites, and even if it doesn’t apply, Thi violated the Unruh Act. It cited the company’s refusal to respond to a demand letter as evidence of discrimination, but the appeals court rejected the premise.
“Plaintiffs’ attorney’s letter to Thi E-Commerce did not even explain what barriers existed for blind people,” the court said. “The notice was about as general as one could imagine, and thus there is no reasonable inference of intentional discrimination from Thi E-Commerce’s decision not to ameliorate unspecified access barriers.”
Pacific Trial Attorneys has sued a variety of businesses after issuing similar letters, with mixed success. A federal court in May ruled against the firm in several lawsuits claiming violations of California’s Invasion of Privacy Act. The Fourth Circuit cited a 2022 decision by California’s Second District in which Pacific Trial Attorneys lost an ADA website access suit to support its conclusion.
The ADA defines “place of public accommodation” with specific examples, including theaters, concert halls, bakeries, stores and laundromats. While it was enacted in 1990, before widespread use of the Internet, Congress amended the law in 2008 and failed to add websites to the list, the appeals court noted. .A majority of federal courts agree, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held the ADA applies to “actual, physical places.”
Further, from the “infancy of the Internet,” the Fourth District court said, “Congress has maintained a stated public policy of intentionally avoiding burdening the Internet with laws and regulations.”
The plaintiffs pointed to Justice Department briefs supporting the idea ADA applies to standalone websites. But the majority said plaintiffs “have not pointed to anything in those filings that persuades us the Department of Justice is correct.” Justice ultimately withdrew a rulemaking proposal that would have made its interpretation the law.
“The policy arguments in favor of applying the ADA to Web sites must be counterbalanced against the costs that such rules would impose on businesses and society generally,” the court concluded. “Congress and regulatory bodies are the branches of government best equipped to create such rules.”
Justice Thomas Delaney dissented, saying “applying the ADA only to public accommodations with a physical location is effectively a determination Congress intended to freeze the legislation in time, applying it only to life as it existed when it was enacted.”
“Such an interpretation is problematic,” the judge wrote.
Thi E-Commerce was represented by Harrison Brown of Blank Rome.