The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments for nine cases in October.
On Oct. 4, the U.S. Supreme Court will tackle a case involving the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The question presented in Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer is: “Does a self-appointed Americans with Disabilities Act ‘tester’ have Article III standing to challenge a place of public accommodation’s failure to provide disability accessibility information on its website, even if she lacks any intention of visiting that place of public accommodation?”
According to the petition for writ of certiorari in that case, it involves Deborah Laufer who filed more than 600 federal lawsuits against hotel owners and operators alleging their websites are insufficiently clear about whether they are accessible for people with disabilities.
The petition explained Laufer is a self-appointed ADA “tester.”
“As a tester, I visit hotel online reservation services to ascertain whether they are in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act. In the event that they are not, I request that a lawsuit be filed to bring the website into compliance with the ADA so that I and other disabled persons can use it,” according to a declaration from Laufer found in the petition.
On Oct. 11 the court will also hear a gerrymandering-race related case out of South Carolina in Alexander v. SC Conference of the NAACP. The case comes on the heels of a Sept. 26 decision where the high court denied an application for stay in another gerrymandering-race related case out of Alabama.
According to a brief for the United States as amicus curiae in support of neither party, the case came out of South Carolina’s 2020 redistricting process as the issues on appeal focus on the state’s changes to Congressional District 1.
A lower court found race was a “predominant motivating factor in the General Assembly’s design of [CD1].” The high court could deal with multiple questions related to the case and whether the district court erred. The questions focus on everything from an alternative map requirement, to a presumption of good faith and disentangling race from politics.
Another case before the high court in October is connected to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in Murray v. UBS Securities, LLC — the act protects whistleblowers who report financial wrongdoing at publicly traded companies, according to a court document.
The question in that Oct. 10 case is: “Under the burden-shifting framework that governs Sarbanes-Oxley cases, must a whistleblower prove his employer acted with a ‘retaliatory intent’ as part of his case in chief, or is the lack of ‘retaliatory intent’ part of the affirmative defense on which the employer bears the burden of proof?”
On Oct. 31, O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier will be heard. The high court will deal with the question of whether a public official engages in a state action that’s subject to the First Amendment by blocking someone from the official’s personal social-media account, when the public official uses that account to feature their job while communicating job-related matters to the public, but doesn’t do so pursuant to any governmental authority or duty.
The case Lindke v. Freed, which will also be heard Oct. 31, will touch on a similar matter before the high court. The question in that case asks: “Whether a public official’s social media activity can constitute state action only if the official used the account to perform a governmental duty or under the authority of his or her office.”
None of the cases Law Week looked through for October came out of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Of the cases announced for November, none of those were from the 10th Circuit either.