Plaintiff loses website accessibility case under the Americans with Disabilities Act

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires places of public accommodation -- basically anyplace that welcomes visitors -- to make their places accessible for the disabled. That certainly is true for buildings. But it also applies to other places, like websites. Occasionally you hear about cases against businesses that do not comply with the ADA through their websites. I have not seen many cases in the Second Circuit on website accessibility. This is one such case, and the plaintiff loses.

The case is Laufer v. Ganesha Hospitality, LLC, issued on July 5. Plaintiff went to hotel reservation websites for Quality Inn in Connecticut but found no information about whether rooms or other features at the hotel are accessible. Because of this, plaintiff alleges, she was "deprived of the information required to make meaningful choices for travel," causing frustration and humiliation. The hotel moved to dismiss under Rule 12, claiming plaintiff has no standing to sue because she resides in Florida and has no definite plans to visit the hotel. The district court denied the motion because plaintiff suffered "informational harm" and therefore has standing.

These cases are sufficiently unique that few Second Circuit precedents address this issue. The hotel wanted to appeal. Under normal circumstances, it cannot do so and must wait until the case is finally concluded with a judgment against it. That can take years. We want to appeal now! The federal rules allow the district court to certify a case for early, or interlocutory, appeal if the case raises a unique issue that needs to be resolved in the Court of Appeals right away. This is such a case, and that's how it reaches the Second Circuit, which reverses and says plaintiff has no case.

There is no "informational injury" theory of standing under the ADA, the Court of Appeals (Leval, Menashi and Robinson) says. That's the rule in Harty v. West Point Realty, Inc., 28 F.4th 435 (2d Cir. 2022), another case involving a tester who sued under the ADA over website accessibility. In Harty, the Court said that without any intent to visit the location, the informational harm by itself is not enough to win an ADA claim. Summarizing the holding in Harty, the Court says:

“[e]ven assuming that Harty can allege that he was deprived of information to which he is entitled by the ADA, he must also allege downstream consequences from failing to receive the required information in order to have an Article III injury in fact.” Because “Harty asserted no plans to visit West Point or the surrounding area,” we concluded that “he cannot allege that his ability to travel was hampered by West Point Realty’s website in a way that caused him concrete harm.”

That reasoning ends Laufer's case. She did not allege concrete plans to visit Connecticut, let alone the Quality Inn in Cromwell, Connecticut. While plaintiff said she will visit the state once the Covid crisis is over, "those plans are no more definite than the plans of the respondent in Lujan v. Dept. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992), who said she 'intends to go back to Sri Lanka but that 'there is a civil war going on right now' and she did not know when she would return." The Court says "some day" intentions will not confer standing to sue under the ADA.