The hotel argues that the activist, Deborah Laufer, was not entitled to sue it over inadequate disclosures because she did not intend to stay there.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether a disability rights activist may sue hotels for violating a federal disability law, despite having no intention of staying at the properties.
The activist, Deborah Laufer, combed through websites looking for violations of regulations under the law, the Americans With Disabilities Act, that require hotels to disclose information about their accessibility. According to court papers, Ms. Laufer, who lives in Florida, has filed more than 600 lawsuits across the nation over such infractions, typically seeking a declaration that the hotel had broken the law, an injunction ordering it to comply — and legal fees.
Among the companies she sued was Acheson Hotels, which operates the Coast Village Inn and Cottages in Wells, a small town on the southern coast of Maine. She said its website did not identify accessible rooms, provide an option for booking an accessible room or supply enough information to determine whether the rooms and features of the inn were accessible to her. (Ms. Laufer uses a wheelchair, and has impaired vision and limited use of her hands.)
The hotel moved to dismiss the case, saying that Ms. Laufer had not suffered the sort of direct and concrete injury that gave her standing to sue because she had no intention of visiting. The trial judge agreed.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, reversed, saying the situation was akin to one in a 1982 Supreme Court decision that allowed Black “testers” to sue for race discrimination over being denied access to housing despite not actually looking for a place to live.
“The denial of information to a member of a protected class alone can suffice to make an injury in fact — that person’s intended use of the information is not relevant,” Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the appeals court, noting that other federal appeals courts disagreed.
Recent Supreme Court decisions in other areas, Judge Thompson acknowledged, had taken restrictive views of standing.
In its petition seeking Supreme Court review, the hotel questioned Ms. Laufer’s litigation strategy.
“Laufer’s lawsuits typically target small hotels and bed-and-breakfasts,” the petition said. “For these small businesses, the cost of litigating an A.D.A. case — plus a potential fee award — could push them into bankruptcy. So most of Laufer’s defendants are forced to settle.”
The hotel’s lawyers added: “A five-minute telephone call to Coast Village could have answered all of Laufer’s accessibility questions. But Laufer did not actually want or need this information — the purpose of visiting the website was to lay the groundwork for a lawsuit.”
In an unusual move, Ms. Laufer’s lawyers agreed that the Supreme Court should grant review in the case, Acheson Hotels v. Laufer, No. 22-429. But they rejected the hotel’s suggestions that their client’s suits were opportunistic or abusive.
“Although tens of millions of disabled Americans visit places of public accommodation or attempt to book rooms at hotels and all suffer the same discriminatory barriers, the A.D.A. does not provide for any award of damages,” the brief said. “It is for this reason that the A.D.A. is enforced by only a small handful of plaintiff advocates.”
In a separate development on Monday, the Supreme Court turned down an appeal from Steven Donziger, a disbarred environmental lawyer at the center of a long and bitter legal saga. The fight started with a lawsuit against Texaco over accusations that it had polluted rainforests and rivers in South America and ended with his conviction in federal court in New York for criminal contempt for failing to comply with court orders.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, dissented from the court’s decision to turn away Mr. Donziger’s appeal, saying the trial court had violated separation of powers principles by appointing its own prosecutors after the Justice Department refused to pursue the case.
“However much the district court may have thought Mr. Donziger warranted punishment, the prosecution in this case broke a basic constitutional promise essential to our liberty,” Justice Gorsuch wrote in his dissent in the case, Donziger v. United States, No. 22-274. “In this country, judges have no more power to initiate a prosecution of those who come before them than prosecutors have to sit in judgment of those they charge.”
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