Garcia v. Quong Fook Tong
- Joseph Spero
- 3:21-cv-05539
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
Garcia v. Quong Fook Tong: Judge Spero ordered Garcia to explain why his disability-access case should not be dismissed because the business appeared permanently closed.
Orlando Garcia and Quong Fook Tong; the order specifically required Garcia to respond with evidence that Tarta’s Secret continued to operate.
What happened
In Garcia v. Quong Fook Tong, Orlando Garcia brought claims under California’s Unruh Act and Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act concerning accessibility at Tarta’s Secret, a business in San Francisco. The court declined to hear the state-law claim, leaving only the disability claim.
Garcia said the business was open when he visited in June 2021. But photographs from an investigator’s July 26, 2021 visit showed the business boarded up and closed. Because the federal disability law allows only an order requiring future changes, the court said a permanent closure could eliminate any live dispute and the court’s authority to hear the case.
The court did not dismiss the case in this order. Instead, Judge Joseph C. Spero ordered Garcia to show cause—meaning to explain—why the case should not be dismissed, and directed him to file evidence that Tarta’s Secret was still operating by July 22, 2022.
The detailed version
- Garcia v. Quong Fook Tong · No. 3:21-cv-05539
- Joseph Spero
- July 15, 2022
Background
Orlando Garcia asserted claims under California’s Unruh Act and Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), alleging accessibility violations at Tarta’s Secret, a business located at 751 Clay Street in San Francisco, California. The court had declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law claim, so only the ADA claim remained.
Garcia maintained that Tarta’s Secret was open when he visited in June 2021. The photographs included in his initial disclosures, however, showed that an investigator visited the business on July 26, 2021, when it was boarded up and closed.
Court’s reasoning
The court explained that Title III of the ADA provides only injunctive relief for the type of claim at issue. Injunctive relief is a court order requiring or preventing conduct in the future. The court reasoned that if Tarta’s Secret was permanently closed, there would be no ongoing condition for an injunction to address. That would make the request for future relief moot and deprive the court of subject-matter jurisdiction, meaning authority to decide the case.
Order
The court issued an order to show cause. It ordered Garcia to explain why the case should not be dismissed because the business involved in his claim appeared to be permanently closed. Garcia was directed to file a response, including evidence that Tarta’s Secret continued to operate as a business, no later than July 22, 2022. This order did not itself dismiss the case.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.