Brooke v. Rihh LP

Background

Theresa Brooke alleged that she is a disabled woman who uses a wheelchair and frequently travels to California. Before a planned trip, she tried to reserve the “Presidential Suite” at RIHH LP’s Residence Inn Livermore Pleasanton hotel. She alleged that the hotel did not offer that room in an accessible version, even though it offered the room to people without accessibility needs. She claimed that this deterred her from booking the room and that she intended to visit the hotel if the alleged barrier were corrected.

Brooke asserted claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), including the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design, and under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.

Motion and jurisdictional ruling

RIHH LP moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), which challenges a federal court’s subject-matter jurisdiction, and Rule 12(b)(6), which challenges whether the complaint states a legally sufficient claim. RIHH LP argued that Brooke lacked standing because the hotel did not have a Presidential Suite and that her alleged future visit was too uncertain. It also argued that Brooke’s Unruh Act claim failed because she accessed the hotel’s website from Arizona rather than California.

The court denied RIHH LP’s Rule 12(b)(1) challenge to Brooke’s ADA claim. It found that the standing dispute and the ADA claim were based on closely related factual questions, including whether the hotel offered a Presidential Suite and whether its accessible rooms satisfied the ADA’s requirements. The court concluded that deciding those disputed facts on a jurisdictional motion was inappropriate.

ADA claim

The court granted the Rule 12(b)(6) challenge to the ADA claim. The 2010 ADA Standards provision at issue requires accessible rooms to be distributed among the different classes of guest rooms and to provide comparable choices, such as room size, bed size, cost, view, and other amenities. The court held that the standards require comparable, not identical, choices. They therefore did not require RIHH LP to provide an accessible version of the Presidential Suite specifically.

Because Brooke identified only the Presidential Suite as a room that lacked an accessible version, the court ruled that she had not adequately alleged a violation of the ADA Standards. It dismissed the ADA claim without prejudice.

Unruh Act claim

The court dismissed the Unruh Act claim with prejudice. It ruled that Brooke had not shown that she was a person within California’s jurisdiction. The court relied on the allegations that she was an Arizona resident and that she accessed RIHH LP’s website from Arizona, where the alleged injury occurred.

Disposition

The court ordered that Brooke’s first cause of action, for an ADA violation, be dismissed without prejudice for failure to state a claim. It ordered that her second cause of action, under the Unruh Act, be dismissed with prejudice for lack of standing. The court stated that Brooke could file an amended complaint by March 6, 2020. Judge Susan Illston signed the order on February 18, 2020.