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Date: 06-12-2024
Case Style:
Case Number: 0:23-CV-442
Judge: Paul A. Magnuson
Court: United States District Court for the District of Minnesota (Hennepin County)
Plaintiff's Attorney:
Defendant's Attorney: Daniel R. Olson, Danielle W. Fitzsimmons, Jessica L. Kometz, Kevin P. Hickey
Description:
Minneapolis, Minnesota civil rights lawyers represented the Plaintiff who sued on an Americans With Disabilities Act violation theory.
Plaintiff and the members of the putative classes are blind and visually
impaired individuals who rely upon auxiliary aids and services including tactile, speech-
enabled, and other accessible information and communications technology that makes
visually delivered materials available to and privately and independently usable for
individuals who are blind or have low vision.
In 2019, Defendant opened the first of its new “HealthHub” stores and
announced its intention to roll-out the HealthHub store model nationally. By the end of
2021 Defendant intended to open 1,500 HealthHub stores throughout the United States.
HealthHub stores require those seeking healthcare to use a visual, touch-
screen, self-service kiosk to check-in or schedule appointments, which requires the input
of personal and private information related to the medical issue or issues they wish to be
seen for. But Individuals who are blind or have low vision cannot independently navigate
all of the functions available on the self-serve kiosk.
Defendant’s HealthHub self-service kiosks are not tactile and are not speech
enabled and do not offer the technology necessary and available to enable blind and low
vision individuals to enter personal and private information with the same degree of
independence and personal privacy afforded to those without visual impairments.
As a result, Plaintiff and the putative classes are forced to seek assistance
from and divulge private and personal information to a sighted person in a nonconfidential
setting, where other people may be walking by the kiosks and standers-by can easily
overhear, if they wish to take advantage of Defendant’s HealthHub self-service kiosks; an
affront to privacy that Defendant’s sighted customers are not subjected to.
42 U.S.C. 12101 provides:
(a) FindingsThe Congress finds that—
(1) physical or mental disabilities in no way diminish a person’s right to fully participate in all aspects of society, yet many people with physical or mental disabilities have been precluded from doing so because of discrimination; others who have a record of a disability or are regarded as having a disability also have been subjected to discrimination;
(2) historically, society has tended to isolate and segregate individuals with disabilities, and, despite some improvements, such forms of discrimination against individuals with disabilities continue to be a serious and pervasive social problem;
(3) discrimination against individuals with disabilities persists in such critical areas as employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services, voting, and access to public services;
(4) unlike individuals who have experienced discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, religion, or age, individuals who have experienced discrimination on the basis of disability have often had no legal recourse to redress such discrimination;
(5) individuals with disabilities continually encounter various forms of discrimination, including outright intentional exclusion, the discriminatory effects of architectural, transportation, and communication barriers, overprotective rules and policies, failure to make modifications to existing facilities and practices, exclusionary qualification standards and criteria, segregation, and relegation to lesser services, programs, activities, benefits, jobs, or other opportunities;
(6) census data, national polls, and other studies have documented that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally;
(7) the Nation’s proper goals regarding individuals with disabilities are to assure equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for such individuals; and
(8) the continuing existence of unfair and unnecessary discrimination and prejudice denies people with disabilities the opportunity to compete on an equal basis and to pursue those opportunities for which our free society is justifiably famous, and costs the United States billions of dollars in unnecessary expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity.
(b) PurposeIt is the purpose of this chapter—
(1) to provide a clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities;
(2) to provide clear, strong, consistent, enforceable standards addressing discrimination against individuals with disabilities;
(3) to ensure that the Federal Government plays a central role in enforcing the standards established in this chapter on behalf of individuals with disabilities; and
(4) to invoke the sweep of congressional authority, including the power to enforce the fourteenth amendment and to regulate commerce, in order to address the major areas of discrimination faced day-to-day by people with disabilities.
Outcome: Settled and dismissed with prejudice.
Plaintiff's Experts:
Defendant's Experts:
Comments: