Recent California Court Decisions Parallel Trends in WCAG Compliance Lawsuits

2019 was another record breaking year for ADA Title III lawsuits filed in federal courts, and one fifth of those complaints alleged website and mobile app inaccessibility, according to Seyfarth Shaw LLP’s ADA Title III Litigation: A 2019 Review and Hot Trends for 2020. Courts remain divided on whether ADA protections apply to persons with disabilities visiting a website to discover or conduct business, based on whether the business has a physical location with a connection to the website. The majority of federal court decisions conclude that the website of a business with a physical place consumers may visit is covered by the ADA because the website is a service or benefit of that “place of public accommodation”. In many of these cases, the plaintiff must allege they were denied access to the businesses’ physical location by virtue of the website’s inaccessibility. An example could be a person who is blind being unable to find store location information due to the company’s website being incompatible with a screen reader. Courts taking the position that a website is itself a “public accommodation” within the meaning of the ADA are fewer, but increasing. The following three recent decisions in California trial and appellate courts demonstrate this division.

Martinez v. Kydia Inc.

9 December 2019

Kydia is significant, in that it upholds court decisions that a company’s website is a “public accommodation” within the meaning of the ADA, regardless of a connection to a physical location.

In his ruling on “whether equality applies to a non-physical marketplace within the meaning of Title Ill of ADA”, Riverside County Court Judge Angel M. Bermudez first affirmed the language offered by the Second District Court of Appeal in National Ass’n of the Deaf v. Netflix, Inc. “In a society in which business is increasingly conducted online, excluding businesses that sell services through the Internet from the ADA would run afoul of the purposes of the ADA and would severely frustrate Congress’s intent that individuals with disabilities fully enjoy the goods, services, privileges and advantages, available indiscriminately to other members of the general public” and “[e]xcluding websites just because they are not built of brick and mortar runs counter to the purpose of the statute.”

Judge Bermudez’s decision addresses the argument of whether websites require a “nexus to a physical location” to be covered by the ADA in citing Robles v. Dominos. The judge in that case made the specific point that the Dominos website, alleged to be inaccessible, fell under the jurisdiction of ADA Title III because of the nexus between the site and Dominos’ physical storefront locations, or “places of public accommodation”. Judge Bermudez contended that, “the [Robles] opinion does not recognize the technological shift that has occurred in the commercial world. Merchants’ offices have physically moved from brick and mortar to computer terminals. …Additionally, brick and mortar cannot physically possess every item imaginable. Under the Robles opinion disabled citizens that need a critical item for their own existence, but can only find them through cyber stores, will not be afforded any protection under the ADA if there is no storefront with which to have a nexus. …This runs counter to the purpose of the ADA.”

It remains to be seen if other courts will uphold this interpretation going forward, but the plain language in the ADA that “the types of accommodation and services provided to individuals with disabilities, under all of the titles of this bill, should keep pace with the rapidly changing technology of the times” leaves the door open to similar rulings, based on the common use of websites in today’s marketplace. Precedent set by affording the protections of the ADA to persons with disabilities conducting business via telephone or correspondence is also key. (Carparts Distribution Center v. Automotive Wholesaler’s Association of New England, Inc. and PaIozzi v. Allstate Life Ins. Co.) The Carparts court observed, “[i]t would be irrational to conclude that persons who enter an office to purchase services are protected by the ADA, but persons who purchase the same services over the telephone or by mail are not.” As websites have increasingly become a standard form of communication for discovering and obtaining commercial goods and services, their inclusion as “places of public accommodation”, which should be accessible to persons with disabilities, is in line with the ADA admonishment that accommodations and services prescribed by ADA “keep pace with the rapidly changing technology of the times”.

Other recent rulings in California align with the majority opinion that websites with a nexus to a brick and mortar business are covered by Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and therefore must be accessible to people with disabilities.

Thurston v. Midvale

3 September 2019

The Second Appellate District Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s ruling that Midvale violated the ADA and California Unruh Civil Rights Act by having a restaurant website that could not be used by a blind person with a screen reader.

Martinez v. San Diego County Credit Union (SDCCU)

18 June 2020

The California Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District reversed a trial court’s decision that the website of the SDCCU, which has physical banking locations, was not a “public accommodation” under the ADA. This decision is important because, while it did affirm the need for a connection between the defendant’s website and physical location, it did not require that the plaintiff show that issues of in-access on the website prevented them from enjoying the goods and services of that physical place.

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