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ADA and disabled rights roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 11:03:02 +0000

I’ve expanded the previous post in this space on Braille gift cards into a longer Cato post with a bit more on the politics and history of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), mentioning along the way the recent closure of a popular San Jose coffee shop [Nadia Lopez, San Jose Spotlight; another San Jose deli story] Speaking of such happenings, “He says the suit could mean the end of the restaurant. ‘We would rather just close down if we have to pay that absurd amount of money,’ he says.” [Rancho Vegano in New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood; Michael Scotto, NY1 Spectrum News]
“It’s about time! New rule could have emotional support animals bumped from planes” [Lynn Norment, Memphis Commercial Appeal; Wes Siler, Outside; David Koenig, AP]
Videos on leading pornographic websites “lack enough closed captioning, claims the class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of all deaf and hard-of-hearing people.” [Noah Goldberg, New York Daily News]
“Federal Website Access Lawsuit Numbers Increase 7 Percent in 2019, With Possible Bump from Supreme Court Denial of Cert in Domino’s” [Kristina M. Launey and Minh N. Vu, Seyfarth Shaw; Vu on related litigation trends in 2019]
“White students in New York City are 10 times as likely as Asian students to have a 504 designation that allows extra time on the specialized high school entrance exams.” [Kevin Quealy and Eliza Shapiro, New York Times; Dana Goldstein and Jugal K. Patel, New York Times (“it helps to have cash” in getting pricey psychological assessments in Southern California); Education Next (“number of high school students being given special allowances for test-taking, such as extra time, has surged in recent years” with students in affluent suburbs more likely to get them)]
“Law firms settle suit accusing them of civil RICO conspiracy to collect ADA settlements” [Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal; Moore and Mission law firms, California; KGO/ABC7News on some Bay Area cases]

Tags: ADA filing mills, airlines, Bay Area, disability & schools, disabled rights, NYC, service animals, web accessibility, WO writings

ADA and disabled rights roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Public health roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 11:02:06 +0000

After a crackdown on saloon drinking backed by Theodore Roosevelt and others, creative New Yorkers opened 1500 new “hotels” and complied with rules linking alcohol to food by serving desiccated sandwiches meant not to be eaten [Darrell Hartman, Atlas Obscura on Raines Law]
“‘The evidence is very, very strong that there’s a powerful potential health benefit if you can’t get people to quit entirely, to get them to switch from cigarette smoking to vaping,’ Olson said.” [Scott McClallen, Center Square] Here comes Massachusetts to make things worse [Jeffrey Singer]
If you suppose that transcontinental air travel is worsening the risk of global pandemics, then you may suppose erroneously [Johan Norberg “Dead Wrong” video]
Zoning will not bring slimness: “Fast-Food Bans Are a Dumb Idea That Won’t Die” [Baylen Linnekin] Having a supermarket enter a food desert has at best a minor effect on healthy eating [Hunt Allcott et al., Quarterly Journal of Economics, earlier]
The imperialism of public health: wealth inequality, affordable housing declared topics for action by the public health profession [Petrie-Flom]
“From the 1910s through the 1950s, and in some places into the 1960s and 1970s, tens of thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of American women were detained and forcibly examined for STIs…. If the women tested positive, U.S. officials locked them away in penal institutions with no due process….. During World War II, the American Civil Liberties Union not only failed to oppose the Plan; its founder, Roger Baldwin, sent a memorandum encouraging its local branches to cooperate with officials enforcing it.” [Scott W. Stern, History.com]
Public health campaign against arsenic-tainted wells in Bangladesh appears to have inadvertently increased child mortality in places where alternative was surface water, which is more likely to carry microbial contamination [Nina Buchmann, Erica M. Field, Rachel Glennerster, & Reshmaan N. Hussam, Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy No. 180]

Tags: airlines, alcohol, land use and zoning, public health, tobacco

Public health roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

ADA and disabled rights roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 09:58:25 +0000

Supreme Court declines review in Domino’s case, so no resolution is in sight of what and how much the ADA may require about web accessibility [Tucker Higgins, CNBC; Corbin Barthold, Law and Liberty; earlier]
NYC co-ops, condos targeted: “These lawyers have one handicapped client, and they go with this person from building to building with commercial spaces.” [Marianne Schaefer, Habitat magazine] Related: John Egan, Seyfarth Shaw;
“Airline’s Provision of Alternative Accessible Website Triggers Hefty Fine Under the Air Carrier Access Act” [Kristina M. Launey & Minh N. Vu, Seyfarth Shaw last winter]
“A handy FAQ for service animals in the workplace” [Jon Hyman]
“Thus far, these serial cases appear [more] designed to extract a quick settlement than rectify a real harm, as evidenced by the choice of plaintiff,” who couldn’t actually join credit union but sued anyway [Hollie Ferguson, Legal NewsLine] “Federal judge deals body blow to attorney at center of serial ADA lawsuits” [Casmira Harrison, Daytona Beach News-Journal; Minh Vu, Seyfarth Shaw]
Law School Admissions Test will be doing away with its analytical reasoning portion, also known as logic problems, after a blind plaintiff sued saying it “it wasn’t fair for visually impaired people because the most common way to solve the problems was to draw diagrams and pictures.” [Cheyna Roth, Michigan Radio (NPR)]

Tags: ADA filing mills, airlines, disabled rights, real estate, service animals, testing, web accessibility

ADA and disabled rights roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

September 20 roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 10:01:05 +0000

Oregon: “Union-Backed Ballot Initiative Would Limit Grocery Stores to 2 Self-Checkout Machines” [Christian Britschgi, Reason]
Not unexpectedly, given its own precedent, Ninth Circuit rules Idaho inmate entitled to sex reassignment surgery [Amanda Peacher and James Dawson, NPR; pre-ruling (July) KRCC/NPR podcast and interview with Peacher, I’m quoted as in earlier coverage; earlier]
I wrote a personal recollection at Cato of philanthropist David Koch;
“Flight attendants and airport staff now get trained to intervene in what federal officials (falsely) portray as an epidemic of airline-based sex trafficking which can be spotted by good Samaritans who know the ‘signs.'” And mistakes will happen [Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Reason]
Population growth has caused the Ninth Circuit to bulge at the seams. Left-right political advantage isn’t a good reason to break it up, but there are plenty of nonpolitical reasons that are good [Ilya Shapiro and Nathan Harvey, George Mason Law Review]
“The legal profession was regarded by both the authors of The Federalist and Alexis de Tocqueville as the anchor of the republic —- a barrier to destabilizing innovation and a constraint on excessive democratic passions.” What happened? [John McGinnis]

Tags: airlines, labor unions, lawyers, Ninth Circuit, Oregon, trafficking, transgender, WO writings

September 20 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Air Canada ordered to pay $21K to two francophones over language violations”

Walter Olson — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 04:05:44 +0000

A federal court in Canada “has ordered Air Canada to pay a total of $21,000 to two francophones for repeated violations of their language rights, including seatbelts on which the instruction to “lift” the buckle was marked only in English.” Among other elements in the complaints by Michel and Lynda Thibodeau: “that a French-language boarding announcement made at the airport” in Fredericton, New Brunswick, “was not as detailed as the English-language one” and “that planes’ emergency exit door signs were either in English only, or the English words were in larger font than the French ones.” [Canadian Press]

Tags: airlines, Canada, language bias

“Air Canada ordered to pay $21K to two francophones over language violations” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

November 28 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 28 Nov 2018 10:53:10 +0000

Georgia woman jailed for three months after field drug test misidentifies contents of plastic bag in her car, which she had told disbelieving officers contained blue cotton candy [WMAZ] Related: Georgia “Drug Recognition Expert” officers sometimes arrest drivers who are sober [Brendan Keefe and Michael King, WMAZ in January]
“What I call the four forces of the regulatory state — regulation by administration, prosecution, and litigation; and progressive anti-federalism—operate mostly independently of Congress, notwithstanding the legislative branch’s constitutional power to ‘regulate Commerce … among the several States.'” [Jim Copland, City Journal]
Rights of associational privacy: Bradley Smith of the Institute for Free Speech comments on the ongoing relevance on the 60th anniversary of NAACP v. Alabama [Cato Daily Podcast with Brad Smith and Caleb Brown]
“If you’ve flown on a major airline within the past 7 years, you might be cashing in” although the settlement website admits it’s “possible that ticket buyers will never get any money from the lawsuit” owing to fees and expenses [KMBC]
To argue for freedom, sometimes it makes sense to argue for things other than freedom [Jonathan Rauch on same-sex marriage and medical marijuana controversies, quotes me; David Henderson/EconLib]
“The Eleventh Circuit takes a tour through the history of copyright and the nature of authorship in exploring whether the state of Georgia can assert copyright in its annotated state laws and thereby prevent a nonprofit from making them available for free online. (It can’t.)” [John Kenneth Ross, IJ “Short Circuit,” on Code Revision Commission v. Public.Resource.Org]

Tags: airlines, copyright, First Amendment, Georgia, illegal drugs

November 28 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

TSA agents mostly can’t be sued

Walter Olson — Sat, 14 Jul 2018 14:02:40 +0000

The Third Circuit has ruled that TSA (Transportation Security Administration) screeners are largely immune from being sued for overly intrusive handling of travelers’ persons, false imprisonment, and similar offenses. “The majority said it was ‘sympathetic’ to concerns that its decision would leave fliers with ‘very limited legal redress'” for abuse, but said its hands were tied by the terms of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA); TSA screeners, it said, were shielded from liability because they were not “investigative or law enforcement officers” but more akin to — and I am not making this up — federal meat inspectors. [Jonathan Stempel, Reuters; Fredrick Kunkle, Washington Post (meat inspector reference; court “acknowledged that as a result, passengers have very limited legal options even in the face of outrageous TSA misconduct.”); Pellegrino v. TSA]

Tags: airlines, public employment, sovereign immunity

TSA agents mostly can’t be sued is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

June 13 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 10:01:49 +0000

Put a Plimsoll line on a T-shirt and you might hear from trademark lawyers [Cyrus Farivar, ArsTechnica]
“Do Landlords Have a Duty to Evict Drug-Using Tenants (or Face Liability if Guests Die When Using Drugs with Them)?” [Eugene Volokh]
Interview with Judge Jeffrey Sutton about his new book on state constitutions, “51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law” [Ilya Somin, parts one and two] Federalist Society teleforum with Judge Sutton, Randy Barnett, and Judge William Pryor;
“American Airlines bans insects, hedgehogs and goats as emotional support animals” [CNNMoney/WQAD] Peacocks begone: “JetBlue Updates Requirements for Emotional Support Animals” [press release]
Gov. Hogan vs. teachers’ unions, pension mandate, a socialist for MoCo County Executive?, and more in my latest Maryland roundup [Free State Notes]
“A Devastated Puerto Rico Must Still Contend with the Jones Act” [Cato Podcast with Colin Grabow and Caleb Brown, earlier]

Tags: airlines, landlord tenant law, Maryland, service animals, state high courts

June 13 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Delta: no more free-for-all on service animals

Walter Olson — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 05:05:35 +0000

Following a series of safety incidents that included the mauling of a passenger last year by a 70-pound dog, Delta Air Lines has tightening its onboard policies on emotional support and other service animals, requiring additional documentation of their role and training and excluding some species altogether, including “‘farm poultry,’ hedgehogs and anything with tusks.” [Karin Brulliard, Washington Post/PennLive; earlier here, here, etc.] The carrier said there had been “a 150 percent increase in the number of service and support animals carried onboard since 2015.” [Alana Wise/Reuters] Employers are bracing for a rising number of demands to let employees bring service animals with them into the workplace, with the likes of the EEOC litigating in support [Patrick Dorrian, BNA/Bloomberg, earlier] And New York has joined a number of other states in passing a law against service animal fraud. [Kevin Fritz and John Egan, Seyfarth Shaw]

Tags: airlines, service animals

Delta: no more free-for-all on service animals is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

October 25 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 09:58:56 +0000

Canada: passenger sues saying low-cost airline boasted of “champagne service” but served only sparkling wine [The Points Guy]
Not just air: balloon makers face serious copyright issues [Timothy Casey (Baker & Hofstadter), Balloon Professionals Magazine via @JenniferMRomig on Twitter]
Noteworthy: Gov. Jerry Brown (D-Calif.), citing due process concerns, vetoes state bill adopting into law Obama-era guidance on campus sexual misconduct [Emily Yoffe, The Atlantic]
New electronic logging mandate eliminates fudge factor for independent and big-fleet truckers alike. What could go wrong? [Alan Smith and Forrest Lucas, The Hill]
San Diego: “Artist Says Hotel Damaged His Work, Let It Be Used in Porn” [Victoria Prieskop, Courthouse News]
“U.S. Withdrawal from UNESCO Is A Good Start” [Marian Tupy, Reason]

Tags: advertising, airlines, art and artists, copyright, hotels, Jerry Brown, Title IX, United Nations

October 25 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system