Disability

Emotional support animal fraud is a big deal for not only businesses but for people with disabilities with service animals. Businesses and landlords have to manage it. People with disabilities with service animals wind up in a situation where their service animals might be in jeopardy. Also, the emotional support animal abuse creates a presumption that the person with the disability does not have a service animal. Accordingly, various states are passing laws to deal with this issue. We previously discussed what Illinois did here. Just recently, on September 8, 2021, California enacted a law dealing with emotional support…
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“Odd and Ends” is the title of a Bob Dylan concert compilation film that was recently released in digital format.³ My odds and ends are probably not as interesting, but I’ve been busy for the last month litigating claims under the FHA and ADA, so this blog is part one of a two part effort to catch up. I’m hoping to release a “greatest hits” blog in the near future. Pursuit of Respect keeps sending demands I’ve gotten a dozen calls in the last few weeks from businesses in Pennsylvania, California and Florida who got demand letters from one attorney…
Next week, my daughter is on break and will be making college trips with each of her parents to different parts of the country. Then, all of us will meet up to see both sides of the family at the end of the week. So, I am hoping that I can get a blog entry up next week on either Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. That said, it is going to be very hectic. So, do not be surprised if a blog entry does not go up next week. I anticipate my next blog entry will be posing a rebuttal to…
Previously, I mentioned that the upcoming Supreme Court term will have two cases before it pertaining to the rights of people with disabilities. One of those cases asks the question of whether disparate impact claims exist under §504 of the Rehabilitation Act. On August 24, 2021, the Ninth Circuit over a dissent said that such claims were allowed in Payan v. Los Angeles Community College District, here. As usual, the blog entry is divided into categories and they are: facts; what happened at the district court level; majority opinion/private right of action exists for disparate impact claims; majority opinion/disparate…
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Today’s blog entry is something I came across by way of my subscription to the Wait A Second blog, which focuses on all things in the Second Circuit and can be found in my blogroll. The case of the day is Winegard v. Newsday LLC decided by United States District Court of the Eastern District of New York on August 16, 2021. It talks about whether a place of public accommodation can be an Internet based business. As you may recall, there are several lines of jurisprudence regarding this: never; always; gateway; if one of the businesses in 42 U.S.C.…
Before moving on to the blog entry of the week, some of you may be wondering what happened to the comments section of the blog/website. The host of my blog/website has decided to discontinue that feature for the reasons mentioned here. While very few comments were made on each of the blog entries over the years, the ones that were posted were very incisive. I will miss them. What this means any updates to the blog entries will have to occur within the blog entry itself or be a separate blog entry linking to the prior blog entry. Also,…
Today’s blog entry is a discussion of two related cases. The comes from the first case comes out of the 11th Circuit. It is Behr v. Campbell, here, and it discusses the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. That decision is a published decision decided on August 12, 2021. The second decision is Lund v. Cowan, a published decision out of the Ninth Circuit decided on July 15, 2021. Lund discusses judicial immunity. As you will see, the two cases very much relate to each other.   Behr is an extremely significant decision for people with disabilities. As I have mentioned before,…
On one of the local National Public Radio stations here in Atlanta metropolitan area, there is a show called Political Rewind. On that show, distinguished panelists (political consultants, former officeholders, political science professors, etc.), talk about what is going on in Georgia politics and nationally as well. Today, they were talking about Republicans in Georgia being very interested in emulating what the Governor of Florida has done with respect to parental rights laws so that people do not have to wear masks and not be subject to mask mandates. The question arises whether the ADA or the Rehabilitation Act can…
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The constellation Canis Major rises and falls with the sun during the hottest part July and August; hence the “dog days of summer.” Although only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun*  the courts have been busy working in air conditioned chambers on ADA and FHA matters: Just what is an accessible website? Wright v. Thread Experiment, LLC, 2021 WL 243604, at *4 (S.D. Ind., Jan. 22, 2021) is a default judgment case, but it remains interesting because the Court expressly declined to order compliance with any version of WCAG, choosing instead to enter a much less…
Back in July of 2020, I blogged on the case of Colton v. Fehrer Automotive, North America, LLC., here. That case explored the question of whether a 4’6” tall person has a disability under the ADA. The District Court threw the case out because the plaintiff did not allege any underlying reason for her being short and therefore, she did not have a disability under the ADA because she did not have a physical impairment. She appealed to the 11th Circuit and the 11th Circuit in a per curiam unpublished decision-decided July 21, 2021-, affirms. Since the facts were discussed…