The Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is a powerful law that provides protections to those with disabilities. One of those protections is the right for public buildings and employment to remain accessible to those who are disabled. If a building does not meet the specific structural requirements of the ADA, the disabled person can bring a lawsuit against the building owner or the business.
Read on as our Chicago business litigation lawyer at Ellis Legal explains more about ADA lawsuits.
ADA Testers
However, the ADA has had another unintended consequence: The use of ADA testers.
ADA testers are people who are disabled as defined by the ADA and who go to local businesses and establishments to check to see if the businesses’ structures and premises are compliant with the ADA. They will measure every step, ramp, door opening, and other areas of compliance.
ADA testing has even extended to websites, with ADA testers visiting websites to evaluate them for ADA compliance.
And if testers find that there is noncompliance with the ADA, they will sue.
The Debate For and Against
The use of these testers has become very controversial, largely because businesses see these testers as nothing more than lawsuit generators.
While businesses want to be compliant with the ADA, their position is that these testers were never on their property to do business—just to test the facility for ADA compliance. As such, the businesses argue, these testers have no legal standing, no right to sue, and have personally not been denied any right or been discriminated against.
They also say that many lawsuits derive from what businesses see as minor, trivial, or nominal ADA violations. Many of these violations are brought by what businesses call “serial litigants,” who bring multiple lawsuits against multiple businesses, thus driving up the cost of doing business.
Testers and many disability rights groups take a different approach. They contend that testers work for the disabled population in general and that testers are able to file lawsuits that force businesses to be ADA-compliant when individual disabled customers may not be able to. In essence, they see these testers as “citizen enforcers” of the ADA on behalf of the larger disabled population.
Are Lawsuits by ADA Testers Valid?
But can a tester actually bring a lawsuit for an ADA violation?
That issue is up in the air, with different laws coming from different federal courts. The Supreme Court had the chance to settle the issue in a case that was brought to it, but the Court declined to rule.
In the seventh circuit, covering Illinois, businesses may have a bit of an advantage, as the seventh circuit has held that a Plaintiff suing under the ADA must have had an interest in the business, that goes beyond just testing for ADA violations to have standing.
But the issue is still unsettled, and while lack of standing remains a valid defense to these kinds of ADA claims, that may not always be the case, and it certainly may not be the case for Illinois businesses who have offices or locations in different states, where those federal circuits may have found that testers do have the requisite standing to bring ADA lawsuits.
Is your business being sued for any reason? Speak with a Chicago business litigation attorney at Ellis Legal at (312) 967-7629 today.