Supreme Court dismisses case of hotel discrimination tester, says it’s moot

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the court’s short opinion noting the lack of resolution. Justice Clarence Thomas said he would have answered the question, and he found that activist Deborah Laufer lacked legal standing to bring the lawsuits.

Laufer, a Florida woman with multiple sclerosis, filed more than 600 lawsuits against hotels she researched online. She accused the hotels of violating the Americans With Disabilities Act by failing to include accessibility information on their reservation websites.

The question for the court was whether disabled people may sue hotel owners to enforce the ADA when they do not intend to stay at the properties — and, more broadly, to what extent people are directly harmed when they experience discriminatory barriers or policies online.

Justice Department rules implementing the ADA in 2010 require hotels to “identify and describe accessible features” in sufficient detail so that people who rely on service dogs or wheelchairs, for instance, can assess whether a hotel meets their needs.

As Barrett put it, Laufer has “singlehandedly” generated a split in the lower courts. Three regional courts of appeals ruled she lacks the legal standing to bring such suits, and three said she has standing.

Laufer’s lawyers and disability rights advocates say her efforts as a tester are no different from the work of Black civil rights advocates who were allowed to sue for discrimination when they were turned away after landlords discovered their race when they inquired about renting apartments they did not intend to occupy.

But lawyers for the owner of the small hotel in southern Maine that Laufer sued in 2020 told the court that she was not directly harmed by the online omission of information about whether the hotel was accessible — because she had no personal need for the information.

Backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations, the hotel owner warned that such lawsuits burden small businesses, clog the court system and undermine the government’s power to enforce the law.

Laufer’s case was complicated this summer after federal judges in Maryland issued an order suspending the law license of her former attorney in a separate case. After that disciplinary action, Laufer took the unusual step of dropping the complaint against Acheson Hotels and urging the Supreme Court to find there is no longer a pressing issue to resolve.

Barrett noted the concerns articulated by lawyers for Acheson, who asked the justices to decide the issue anyway. They noted that the split among regional courts of appeals remained, that the Supreme Court has received briefs and held oral argument, and that the issue is likely to come back to the high court again.

“For efficiency’s sake, Acheson insists that we should settle the issue now rather than repeating the work later,” Barrett wrote.

But she continued: “We are not convinced, however, that Laufer abandoned her case in an effort to evade our review. She voluntarily dismissed her pending ADA cases after a lower court sanctioned her lawyer. She represented to this Court that she will not file any others. Laufer’s case against Acheson is moot, and we dismiss it on that ground.”

Barrett emphasized, however, “that we might exercise our discretion differently in a future case.”

Thomas, writing only for himself, said the court should have decided the merits of the case and ruled against Laufer. “Without a violation of her own rights, Laufer lacks standing to sue hotels under the ADA,” he wrote. “Ensuring and monitoring compliance with the law is a function of a Government official, not a private person who does not assert a violation of her own rights.”

The case is Acheson Hotels v. Laufer.