Whitaker v. Montes
- Edward Chen
- 3:21-cv-00679
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Whitaker v. Montes, Judge Chen granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss Whitaker’s accessibility claims, allowing him to amend his complaint.
Brian Whitaker’s ADA and California Unruh Civil Rights Act claims were dismissed at this stage, but he was allowed to file an amended complaint by June 7, 2021. Villa Montes Hotel, L.P. and its owners obtained dismissal of the motion’s claims, subject to Whitaker’s opportunity to amend.
What happened
Brian Whitaker sued Villa Montes Hotel, L.P. and its owners under the Americans with Disabilities Act and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. He claimed the hotel’s reservation website did not give enough information about accessible features for people with disabilities to judge whether the hotel met their needs.
The court accepted the defendants’ website information for purposes of the motion because it came from the URL identified in the complaint and Whitaker did not dispute that it matched the current website. The court found that the website provided a significant amount of accessibility information, comparable to websites in other cases where courts dismissed similar claims.
The court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss but gave Whitaker permission to amend. Judge Edward M. Chen said Whitaker could potentially state a viable claim if he could truthfully plead and ultimately prove that the website had contained less information before the complaint was filed; the court did not decide any future mootness issue.
The detailed version
- Whitaker v. Montes · No. 3:21-cv-00679
- Edward Chen
- May 7, 2021
Background
Brian Whitaker sued Villa Montes Hotel, L.P. and its owners. He alleged violations of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. The dispute concerned an ADA regulation requiring places of lodging to identify and describe accessible features in hotels and guest rooms offered through reservation services in enough detail to let people with disabilities independently assess whether a hotel or room meets their accessibility needs.
Court’s consideration of website information
Whitaker submitted website information that he argued showed the state of the hotel’s website when he visited it in January 2021. The court declined to take judicial notice of that material because its URL did not match the URL identified in the complaint, and the URL did not lead to the material Whitaker submitted.
The court did take judicial notice of website information submitted by the defendants. That information came from the URL identified in the complaint, and Whitaker did not dispute that it matched the information currently available on the defendants’ website.
Ruling
The court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss with leave to amend. It found that the defendants’ website contained a significant amount of accessibility information and was comparable to, or provided more information than, websites in other cases where courts had ruled for defendants at the stage for testing whether a complaint states a claim. The court distinguished a case cited by Whitaker because the website there provided more limited information.
The court gave Whitaker permission to amend because he asserted that, several weeks before filing the complaint, he or someone acting for him had viewed different, less detailed website information and that the defendants later changed the website to include more accessibility information. The court stated that, if Whitaker could plead and ultimately prove that allegation in good faith, he might have a viable federal or state claim.
The court did not decide whether the current website might make the federal claim legally moot. It noted only that, if a mootness issue arose, it would need to assess the likelihood that the defendants would return to a noncompliant website. Whitaker had until June 7, 2021, to file an amended complaint. The order disposed of Docket No. 8.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.