Washington
Supreme Court to hear lawsuit involving disability activist
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will decide whether a disabled activist can file disability rights lawsuits against hotels she doesn’t intend to visit.
The high court said Monday it would decide a case involving Deborah Laufer. Laufer, who lives in Florida, has filed over 600 federal lawsuits against hotel owners and operators, according to a Supreme Court filing.
Laufer has a vision impairment, uses a cane or wheelchair to get around, and has limited use of her hands, according to court documents. Her lawsuits contend that the websites of accommodations, generally small hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, are not clear enough about whether they are accessible to people with disabilities.
Under the federal Americans With Disabilities Act hotels must identify and describe their accessible features including guest rooms in sufficient detail.
Laufer’s lawsuits and lawsuits by other self-appointed “testers” have divided federal appeals courts. The question is whether Laufer and others have suffered an injury that gives them the ability to sue, called “standing.” Some courts have ruled that people who never intend to visit the accommodations they are challenging can nonetheless sue. Other courts have declined to allow the lawsuits.
The case the court agreed to hear involves the Coast Village Inn and Cottages in Wells, Maine. A federal trial court dismissed Laufer’s lawsuit alleging the hotel’s website contained insufficient information on disability accommodations. But a federal appeals court allowed the case to go forward.
The hotel currently has a notice at the top of its website that reads: “Please Note: Unfortunately, we do not have the capabilities to provide pet-friendly or ADA compliant lodging. We apologize for the inconvenience!”
New York
Judge rules online archive’s book service violated copyright
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge has sided with four publishers who sued an online archive over its unauthorized scanning of millions of copyrighted works and offering them for free to the public. Judge John G. Koeltl of U.S. District Court in Manhattan ruled that the Internet Archive was producing “derivative” works that required permission of the copyright holder.
The Archive was not transforming the books in question into something new, but simply scanning them and lending them as ebooks from its web site.
“An ebook recast from a print book is a paradigmatic example of a derivative work,” Koeltl wrote.
The Archive, which announced it would appeal Friday’s decision, has said its actions were protected by fair use laws and has long had a broader mission of making information widely available, a common factor in legal cases involving online copyright.
“Libraries are more than the customer service departments for corporate database products,” Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle wrote in a blog post Friday. “For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society — owning, preserving, and lending books. This ruling is a blow for libraries, readers, and authors and we plan to appeal it.”
In June 2020, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House sued in response to the Archive’s National Emergency Library, a broad expansion of its ebook lending service begun in the early weeks of the pandemic, when many physical libraries and bookstores had shut down. The publishers sought action against the emergency library and the archive’s older and more limited program, controlled digital lending (CDL). Works by Toni Morrison, J.D. Salinger and Terry Pratchett were among the copyrighted texts publishers cited as being made available.
While the Authors Guild was among those opposing the emergency library, some writers praised it. Historian Jill Lepore, in an essay published in March 2020 in The New Yorker, encouraged readers who couldn’t afford to buy books or otherwise were unable to find them during the pandemic to “please: sign up, log on, and borrow!” from the Internet Archive.
In a statement Friday, the head of the trade group the Association of American Publishers, praised the court decision as an “unequivocal affirmation of the Copyright Act and respect for established precedent.
“In rejecting convoluted arguments from the defendant, the Court has underscored the importance of authors, publishers, and lawful markets in a global society and global economy. Copying and distributing what is not yours is not innovative — or even difficult — but it is wrong,” said Maria Pallante, the association’s president and CEO.
The Internet Archive, founded in 1996, is a nonprofit “founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.” Unlike traditional libraries, it does not acquire books directly through licensing deals with publishers, but through purchases and donations. The archive also includes millions of movies, TV shows, videos, audio recordings and other materials.
Missouri
Traffic officer says he was told to target minority drivers
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City Police Department leaders encouraged officers to meet illegal ticket quotas by targeting drivers in Black and other minority neighborhoods, a lawsuit filed by an officer contends.
Edward Williams, a white traffic officer who said he’s been with the department for 21 years, filed the discrimination lawsuit Monday, the Kansas City Star reported.
Racial profiling is a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Ticket quotas are also illegal under a Missouri state law passed in 2016.
Kansas City police Chief Stacey Graves said in a written statement that the department “is dedicated to policing that is both equitable and fair in all aspects of our duties.” She said officers do not direct enforcement activities based on demographics but instead on high crash areas and citizen traffic complaint locations.
Williams was reprimanded after he reported the violations to his superiors, Williams’ attorney, Gerald Gray II, said.
“Officers have received unsatisfactory marks on their evaluations and had duties and benefits stripped for low ticket writing numbers,” the lawsuit states. “This continues to this date.”
It comes several months after the U.S. Department of Justice announced an investigation into the department’s employment practices to determine if it engaged in any racial discrimination.
