Gross, mother jones. But the bias wasn’t actually as bad as I thought it would be in this article.

Obviously the individual’s right to sue a business for ADA violations should totally be upheld, it’s already pathetic how little businesses are actually held to account for violations as it is, not to mention the incredible slowness of the whole process. but we do need some way to curb the large amount of false ADA violation suits that a few lawyers have decided to make their bread and butter. They send out shit tons of generically worded ADA letters as a fishing expedition, then berry the other party in legalese until they cave, hopefully settling out of court. That’s not the only method, but it is the most common.

Sometimes the companies in question have genuine access issues, but much of the time it’s pretty much random, and targeted at smaller businesses that can’t easily afford to fix access without assistance anyway. It’s basically just a more complex version of that fucked up IRS phone call scam.

It makes us look really bad, and makes a mockery out of the already highly underenforced legislation we do have. What this argument proposes to do is cut everyone off, even genuine complainants, so obviously fuck everyone involved with it. But it is an actual issue, even if the people bringing it up are clearly doing so in bad faith. And I really don’t know enough about the lawyer mentioned to know if they are one of the drive-by ADA suit types, or if Deborah Laufer is just genuinely really dedicated and kicking some serious ass. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt for now though…