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…

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…

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…

July 26 was the 31st anniversary of the ADA. As17 year old daughter would say, “Yeah!!!!!   Today’s blog entry deals with whether long-haul Covid-19 can be a disability under the ADA, §504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and §1557 of the Affordable Care Act. I have been saying for some time that long-haul Covid-19 may very well be a disability depending upon the circumstances. We now know from this guidance put out by DOJ and HHS, here, that I was absolutely on the right track. This blog entry doesn’t have the usual categories associated with it. What I have…