Split 11th Circuit says website not a “public accommodation” under ADA

Courts Eleventh Circuit Appellate Americans with Disabilities Act

On April 7, a split U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit concluded that a website is not a “public accommodation” under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The plaintiff sued a supermarket chain under Title III of the ADA, alleging its website was incompatible with screen reader software and caused him injury by denying him the “full and equal enjoyment” provided to sighted customers. The district court issued a judgment ordering the supermarket chain to bring its website into compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 standard after concluding that the plaintiff sufficiently demonstrated a sufficient “nexus” between the website and the supermarket chain’s physical premises. On appeal, the appellate court reviewed, among other things, the question of whether websites are public accommodations under the ADA. The majority vacated the district court’s ruling that the website was an intangible barrier to the supermarket chain’s physical stores and in violation of the ADA. Specifically, the majority reviewed the 12 types of locations listed as public accommodations under Title III, and found that none of them were “intangible places or spaces, such as websites.”

The majority further distinguished its conclusion from its holding in Rendon. v. Valleycrest Products, Ltd., in which it determined that the ADA covers both tangible, physical barriers as well as “intangible barriers, such as eligibility requirements and screening rules or discriminatory policies and procedures that restrict a disabled person’s ability to enjoy the defendant entity’s goods, services and privileges,” noting that the “limited use website, although inaccessible by individuals who are visually disabled, does not function as an intangible barrier to an individual with a visual disability accessing the goods, services, privileges or advantages of [the supermarket chain’s] physical stores.” Moreover, the majority rejected the plaintiff’s argument that Rendon established that a plaintiff only has to demonstrate a “nexus” between the service and the physical public accommodation, declining to adopt such a standard after finding no basis for it in the ADA or in previous precedent. This decision further divides the circuits over the scope of a “public accommodation.”