The axiom of preventive law is that we live in such a litigious society that you can’t prevent a lawsuit. However, you can take steps where if you get sued you can win that lawsuit. A case that illustrates as to what happens when you do not have preventive law systems is United Spinal Association
Title II
Olmstead evolves
By William Goren on
In Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999), United States Supreme Court held that it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act for for a State to have a system that did not allow persons with mental illness to be treated in the community. Since that time, the United States government has been very aggressive…
New York City taxi licensing regulations redux
By William Goren on
I previously blogged (if you want to read this particular blog entry in context, you will find the original blog entry plus what appears here at that link), about a decision whereby a District Court throughout the New York City regulations with respect to the number of accessible taxis that are required in violation of…
Are the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act the same?
By William Goren on
Case law dealing with the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act will often say say that the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act are governed by the same standards. Eg. Greer v. Richardson Independent School District, 2012 WL 833367, *12 fn 1 (fifth Cir. March 14, 2012). That said, are…
Is a Mixed Motive Jury Instruction Dead under the Americans with Disabilities Act? Rehabilitation Act?
By William Goren on
At the top of the legal resources section on this page, you will see a link to an article that I wrote regarding whether a mixed motive jury instruction is available under the Americans with Disabilities Act. A mixed motive jury instruction is an instruction that says that liability can exist if the plaintiff can…
Title II can’t be used to keep places that grow pot for medical purposes open
By William Goren on
Posted in Federal Cases, Title II
There has been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere, particularly among media, about the decision that just came down from the Ninth Circuit involving the efforts of the cities of Costa Mesa and Lake Forest in California to close down places that grew pot for medical purposes. The link to that decision is below…
Help wanted: ASL practitioners
By William Goren on
Posted in Title II
A fascinating case, Belton v. Georgia, 2012 WL 1080304 (N.D. Ga. March 30, 2012), recently came down from the northern district of Georgia. In this case, two people who were both deaf and suffered from mental illness sued the state of Georgia because the state of Georgia simply was not set up to accommodate…
NFL CBA and the ADA
By William Goren on
Persons with disabilities and the National Football League have been in the news of late. In particular, the Chicago Bears acquired a person with a mental disability and then there was the person in the draft that scored very poorly on the Wunderlic test. I thought it would be interesting to go through the collective…
Comply with the ADA, commit a felony, be sued for actual and punitive damages… Really?
By William Goren on
It is crystal clear that under the ADA that a student in the classroom as a reasonable accommodation would have the right to tape record or otherwise record the class. See 28 C.F.R. § 35.104(2),(3). However, you may want to look at your state’s eavesdropping statute to see if there aren’t some unintended consequences of…
Did the Second Circuit really do that? Is the ADA retroactive
By William Goren on
Since the changes are so radical between the Americans with Disabilities Act and the ADAAA in many ways, a question comes up as to whether those changes are retroactive to pending ADA cases where the facts occurred entirely before January of 2009. There are two U.S. Supreme Court cases out there that strongly suggest that…