A state appeals panel has rejected efforts by class action attorneys and “tester” plaintiffs to sue a Florida-based truck accessory manufacturer over allegations it operated a website that was inaccessible to people who are blind.
Pacific Trial Attorneys, Scott J. Ferrell, David W. Reid, Victoria C. Knowles, and Richard H. Hikida, represent Dominick Martin and Rusty Rendon, who use screen reading software to process online content. They sued Thi E-Commerce regarding RealTruck.com, alleging a lack of alternative text Image descriptions and form labels as well as redundant links resulting in extra navigation and repetition.
According to court records, Martin and Rendon are “testers” who assess compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. They alleged Thi E-Commerce violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act, but Orange County Superior County Court Judge Theodore Howard dismissed the complaint after determining a website isn’t “a place of public accommodation” under the ADA.
The plaintiffs challenged that dismissal before the California Fourth District Appellate Court. Justice Maurice Sanchez wrote the panel’s opinion, filed Sept. 13; Justice Joanne Motoike concurred. Justice Thomas Delaney wrote a partial dissent.
On appeal, the plaintiffs argued Judge Howard erred, but Sanchez said even though the question has decided federal courts, and even the Fourth District Appellate Court, the panel agreed “the ADA unambiguously only applies to physical places,” a ruling the majority would’ve reached even if only considering legislative history and public policy.
Sanchez also noted Martin and Rendon argued their complaint should survive based on the legal theory of intentional discrimination, but the majority held the allegations are insufficient for that approach.
Regarding ADA website guidelines, Sanchez wrote “there is broad agreement” the law applies to a site that “operates as a gateway or nexus to a physical location.” But standalone websites are a different story, he continued, and the majority agreed with precedent that leaned on the notion the phrase “place of public accommodation” applies to physical locations.
The panel said four months after Martin and Rendon filed their appeal, the California Second District Appellate Court decided Martinez v. Cot’n Wash, a nearly identical dispute also involving Pacific Trial Attorneys. That panel reached the same ruling on websites, noting that although internet technology was vastly different when Congress enacted the ADA in 1990, there still were “countless” businesses without a physical presence, such as mail-order catalogs, and in the ensuing years lawmakers have chosen not to act on the topic, including during 2008 ADA amendments.
“At the federal level, the history of the Internet is a history laissez-faire treatment,” Sanchez wrote. “From the infancy of the Internet, Congress has maintained a stated public policy of intentionally avoiding burdening the Internet with laws and regulations.”
Regarding the intentional discrimination argument, the panel again said Cot’n Wash already resolved a similar argument in favor of the website operator. Sanchez said the “plaintiffs’ attorney’s letter to Thi E-Commerce did not even explain what barriers existed for blind people. 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. Moreover, given these barriers concerned a Web site, for the reasons we explained above, there was no reason for Thi E-Commerce to believe that it needed to accommodate plaintiffs under the ADA.”
Delaney opened his consent by asserting agreement on the issue of intentional discrimination. However, he differed with the majority concerning ADA’s applicability to websites. He said there are multiple reasonable meanings of the word “place” and said he reads the ADA’s statutory history to support the plaintiffs’ position.
After praising the ADA for its “clear, sweeping, comprehensive purpose and intent,” Delaney wrote that perception “would be defeated by an interpretation that persons wishing to access goods and services of a public accommodation with a physical location open to the public are protected by the ADA while those attempting to access identical goods and services from an identical public accommodation lacking a physical location open to the public are not.”
Delaney said the majority’s position doesn’t properly consider Congress’ broader goals in enacting the ADA and “is effectively a determination Congress intended to freeze the legislation in time, applying it only to life as it existed when it was enacted.”
However, Delaney did agree with the majority position that the panel’s role wasn’t to consider “desirability, policy preferences, balancing of costs and benefits, or the technological implications of applying the ADA to stand-alone websites,” but only to interpret the law.
“Interpreting the ADA to have no physical location restriction, applying it to any qualifying public accommodation irrespective of its chosen method to transact with customers and clients, is the only offered interpretation of the legislation that both promotes and effectuates the law’s purpose,” Delaney concluded.
THI E-Commerce is represented by Blank Rome and Harrison Brown.