Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer

Deborah Laufer (plaintiff), who was wheelchair bound, filed lawsuits against hundreds of hotels, alleging that the failure of each hotel’s website to state accessibility information violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The volume of lawsuits demonstrated that Laufer was not merely suing hotels she hoped to visit but was instead searching the web to test hotels’ websites for the express purpose of suing for instances of noncompliance with the ADA. Most hotels settled with Laufer, but some proceeded to court. They generally argued that Laufer lacked standing because she never intended to stay at their hotel and consequently suffered no concrete injury from the lack of accessibility information. Laufer’s many suits eventually gave rise to a circuit split on that standing issue, with the Second, Fifth, and Tenth Circuits holding that Laufer lacked standing and the First, Fourth, and Eleventh Circuits holding that Laufer had standing. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Laufer’s suit against Acheson Hotels, LLC (Acheson) (defendant) to resolve the circuit split. While Supreme Court review was pending, a federal district court suspended Laufer’s attorney from practicing law after finding that the attorney had defrauded hotels by grossly inflating his fees in petitions and settlement negotiations and by funneling substantial sums to the father of Laufer’s grandchild for investigative work never performed. Following that district-court decision, Laufer voluntarily dismissed her pending suits and stated that she would not file any similar ADA tester suits against other hotels in the future. Laufer then filed a suggestion with the Supreme Court that review of the case against Acheson was moot because she had dismissed the claim against Acheson at the district-court level. Acheson argued that the Supreme Court should still decide the standing issue to resolve the circuit split. It argued that dismissing the suit would mean that others might file similar ADA tester suits in the circuits that found Laufer to have standing. They also argued that there would be little incentive not to file such suits if plaintiffs knew that, should a hotel choose to pursue Supreme Court review, a loss could be avoided by merely abandoning the claim against that hotel. The Supreme Court considered the parties’ arguments.