Frustrating news has emerged from Washington D.C. as the recently-published federal government’s Fall Semiannual Regulatory Agenda revealed that the long-anticipated U.S. Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) for regulations governing website accessibility for places of public accommodation under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“Title III”) would not be issued in the Spring of 2016 as most recently anticipated and would instead be delayed until fiscal year 2018. DOJ now intends to issue a NPRM governing website accessibility for state and local governments under Title II of the ADA in early 2016 and then hopes that that process will create the necessary infrastructure to develop and promulgate similar regulations for entities governed by Title III.
Such news is particularly troubling given the recent surge in website accessibility actions brought against places of public accommodation and business establishments operating exclusively in cyberspace by private plaintiffs, advocacy groups, and regulators at the federal, state, and local levels. Indeed, notwithstanding DOJ’s latest delay, there is no indication that the federal government intends to cease its quest to have places of public accommodation provide accessible websites. Relying upon Title III’s overarching civil rights obligations – most importantly that places of public accommodation provide “full and equal enjoyment” of its goods, services, etc. – DOJ continues to seek website accessibility provisions as part of its settlement agreements with a wide variety of places of public accommodation. DOJ has even gone so far as to file Statements of Interest in private litigations ongoing between both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Association of the Deaf in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts opposing their efforts to have the lawsuits dismissed or stayed pending DOJ’s completion of the rulemaking process. (3:15-CV-30023 (D.Mass) and 3:15-CV-30224 (D.Mass))
The limited number of judicial decisions addressing the applicability of Title III to the websites of places of public accommodation and online businesses do not provide a clear road map for businesses due to the existence of a split body of case law. The current law falls along three primary lines: (i) Title III’s application is limited to actual physical places and cannot apply to websites absent an amendment to Title III or the issuance of new regulations; (ii) Title III applies to websites when there is a nexus between a physical place of public accommodation and the goods and services offered on its website; and (iii) Title III applies to even online-only businesses because Title III must be read broadly to promote the ADA’s goal of allowing individuals with disabilities to fully and equally enjoy and participate in society and, therefore, it must evolve to apply to new technologies. The limited body of case law to date has developed primarily in the preliminary motion to dismiss phase and, therefore, the viability of various potential affirmative defenses or what it means for a website to be accessible has not be sufficiently analyzed by the courts.
Further complicating the landscape, since DOJ announced its previous delay of the regulations (then into April 2016) this past spring, businesses across most industries – including retail, hospitality, financial services, and sports and entertainment – have been deluged with demand letters from industrious plaintiffs’ firms seeking to take advantage of the regulatory uncertainty and limited case law. Understanding that the costs of litigating a developing area of the law may prove significant and the return uncertain, many businesses are opting to reach amicable resolutions to these matters rather than explore more aggressive litigation positions. To the extent others hoped that DOJ guidance would soon stem the tide of these demand letters, this most recent development is disheartening news. Businesses hoping to avoid such letters are best served by taking prophylactic actions to address the accessibility of their websites.
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