Public Accommodations
PRF Law’s Public Accommodations Practice represents people who have been denied equal treatment in the enjoyment of businesses that operate publicly, as well as non-profit groups that seek to eliminate discrimination in public accommodations.
Public accommodations laws ensure that all people have equal access and enjoyment to businesses that hold themselves open to the public. Increasingly public accommodations laws are being applied to online spaces like social medial platforms and other websites.
Title II of the Civil Rights of 1964 prohibits discrimination in public accommodations based on race, color, religion, and national origin. Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits disability discrimination in places of public accommodation and requires public accommodations to be accessible to people with disabilities and make reasonable modifications.
State and local laws often provide greater protections than federal law in the area of public accommodations, including prohibiting discrimination based on sex, age, marital status, partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, military service or status, personal appearance, family responsibilities, political affiliation, and place of residence.
The Public Accommodations Rights We Enforce:
PRF Law enforces public accommodations violations, including by representing the victims of public accommodations discrimination and non-profit groups that serve as private attorneys general in enforcing the law. The violations we enforce include:
Refusing a person access to a place of public accommodation because of a person’s protected status.
Providing inferior terms of service or pricing because of a person’s protected status.
Failing to make a business accessible or refusing to make a reasonable modification, including in public buildings and certain areas of apartment buildings.
Failing to make a website accessible to people with disabilities.
Operating a website that treats people differently based on their race, gender, age, disability, or other protected characteristics.
Making an Impact
Peter Romer-Friedman has litigated cutting edge public accommodations cases to make both physical and online spaces accessible and equal for all people.
In Equal Rights Center v. Equity Residential, No. 06 Civ. 01060 CCB (D. Md.), Peter and his co-counsel at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights represented a local fair housing organization in massive accessibility lawsuit involving hundreds of properties, defeating the defendant’s summary judgment on the issue of whether the fair housing group had standing and winning summary judgment on the merits, leading to a landmark settlement in 2016 in which Equity Residential agreed to survey and remediate conditions in 85 of its properties. In that case, the Equal Rights Center brought claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act.
In Farmer v. Sweetgreen, Inc., No. 16 Civ. 2103 (S.D.N.Y.), Peter represented a putative class of blind persons who challenged a large restaurant chain’s failure to have an accessible website, which prevented blind customers from ordering through the website. The parties reached a settlement in which Sweetgreen agreed to make its web site accessible to blind customers.
In Liapes v. Facebook, Inc, No. 20 Civ. 01712 (Cal. Super.), Peter is currently litigating a putative class action lawsuit against Facebook in which Peter and his co-counsel seek to establish that social media companies violate California’s public accommodations law when they discriminate against their users based on their protected statuses. In Liapes, the plaintiffs are challenging Facebook’s pattern or practice of steering insurance advertisements away from women and older people because of their gender and age. The case has drawn support from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which argued that Facebook’s discrimination and legal arguments resemble the party that defended racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson.
Relevant Cases
