Decision Alert: Court Dismisses Acheson for Mootness, so Civil Rights Testers Can Continue to Enforce the ADA

On December 5, 2023, in the term’s first opinion in an argued case, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer as moot. The opinion, authored by Justice Barrett, reasoned that the case was moot because Deborah Laufer voluntarily dismissed her pending suits after her lawyer was sanctioned for defrauding hotels during settlement negotiations. The opinion leaves for another day the other jurisdictional issue presented by the case—standing to sue over accessibility information under the ADA.

As summarized more fully in Dykema’s November 2023 edition, the standing dispute arose because Laufer systematically searched the internet to find hotels that failed to provide accessibility information and filed a series of pre-enforcement actions to force compliance with the ADA.  She admittedly had no plans to actually visit the hotels. While most hotels settled her claims and paid her attorney’s fees, some refused, arguing that Laufer was not injured by the absence of information and therefore lacked standing. Circuit courts split on the issue.

While the Court acknowledged the risk of gamesmanship in manipulating jurisdiction when a party dismisses their claims after the Court has granted cert, it was not convinced that Laufer abandoned the case to evade review. So the Court vacated the judgment and remanded the case to the Court of Appeals with instructions to dismiss the case as moot under the Court’s Munsingwear doctrine, which provides that when a case becomes moot on appeal, the appropriate remedy is to vacate the lower court’s decision. 

Justices Thomas concurred in the judgment but explained that he would have reached the standing issue and concluded that Laufer lacked standing. He maintained that, chronologically, Laufer would have needed a concrete interest in the case to have standing the day her suit was filed, whereas mootness follows an occurrence that later morphs a previously justiciable case into one improper for adjudication. In his view, Laufer lacks standing because while the ADA prohibits discrimination based on disability, it does not create a right to information. Laufer’s lack of intent to visit the hotel eliminated any connection to her purported legal interest in the accessibility information. Justice Thomas also scrutinized Laufer’s motivations in seeking dismissal.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Jackson took aim at the Munsingwear doctrine. She argued that mootness and vacatur should be addressed separately, contending that lower courts’ judgments in appeals now-moot should be vacated only when fairness demands. She, therefore, proposed that future litigants seeking to vacate for mootness present an equitable argument identifying the harm from the lower court decision remaining in place.

For more information, please contact Chantel Febus, James Azadian, Christopher Sakauye, McKenna Crisp, Monika Harris, or Puja Valera.