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A federal appeals court ruled (PDF) yesterday that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) doesn't apply to Netflix, since the online video provider is "not connected to any actual, physical place."
Donald Cullen sued Netflix in March 2011, attempting to kick off a class-action lawsuit on behalf of disabled people who didn't have full use of the videos because they aren't all captioned. A district court judge threw out his lawsuit in 2013, and yesterday's ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upholds that decision.
The decision is "unpublished," meaning it isn't intended to be used as precedent in other cases. However, it certainly doesn't bode well for any plaintiff thinking about filing a similar case in the 9th Circuit, which covers most of the Western US.
At least one other court has come out the other way on this issue. Three months after Cullen filed suit, the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) filed an ADA lawsuit against Netflix in Massachusetts over the same issue. In that case, the judge found that Netflix was a "place of public accommodation" and would have to face the lawsuit against the disability rights group.
After the company lost the initial motion, Netflix settled the case with NAD, agreeing to pay $750,000 in legal fees and caption all of its videos by the year 2014.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/9th-circuit-rules-netflix-isnt-subject-to-disability-law/
(Score: 5, Informative) by Aichon on Friday April 03 2015, @09:37PM
It's unpublished because they're simply citing earlier precedent and saying there's nothing special about this case.
The 9th Circuit established precedent on how they interpret "public accommodation" way back in 2000, which they interpreted to be referring narrowly to physical places. In the actual text of the ADA, Congress made that pretty clear, in fact, since they gave examples like zoos, auditoriums, restaurants, and laundromats after talking about all sorts of physical considerations, like the actual construction of the facility. Had they intended for it to apply to any sort of venue through which goods or services were provided, they would have surely mentioned things that were around at the time of the writing of the law, such as mail order catalogs, infomercials, or newspapers. But they didn't.
Which is to say, the interesting case happened 15 years ago. The court is simply saying, "don't waste our time when we've already ruled on this issue". That said, it'll be interesting to see if the circuits end up splitting over the issue. If they do and the Supreme Court sides against Netflix, it could have wide-reaching ramifications, such as requiring all sites to be accessible, not to mention other media as well. Newspapers and magazines with mandatory braille editions?
Disclaimer: IANAL, in case it wasn't already obvious.
(Score: 5, Funny) by VLM on Friday April 03 2015, @10:27PM
Newspapers and magazines with mandatory braille editions?
Think of the impact on strip clubs.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Sunday April 05 2015, @02:00AM
I like where you're going with this. Maybe porn videos should offer play-by-play announcement for the benefit of the visually impaired. Done by some guy who sounds like Johnny Most. [youtube.com]