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Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Ind. Courts - Suit filed to require St. Joseph Co. and South Bend to comply with the ADA by improving access to county court buildings"

Erin Blasko reports today in the South Bend Tribune on a new ADA lawsuit filed in federal court Monday. Some quotes:

Kent Hull, with offices in South Bend, filed the lawsuit on behalf of four disabled area residents — Victoria Means, Tonia Matney, Stephen Hummel, and Margaret Hummel.

An attorney with Indiana Legal Services, he represents the plaintiffs in two separate, unrelated civil cases pending in St. Joseph County Superior Court.

The 10-page complaint claims the county and city "acted with intent" in failing over a period of nearly two decades to provide disabled persons adequate access to two court buildings — the St. Joseph County Courthouse in South Bend and County Services Building in Mishawaka.

It seeks relief in the form of damages and preliminary and permanent injunctions against the defendants, identified as the St. Joseph County Board of Commissioners, St. Joseph Superior Court, and city of South Bend.

The city is named because it operates a parking lot that serves the courthouse but "is not sufficiently plentiful and is located a great distance from the courthouse," according to the complaint.

Reached Tuesday, Hull, who also is disabled, said he filed the complaint based on the county's apparent indifference to ADA compliance, evidenced by its continued inaction in regard to the issue.

Since passage of the ADA in 1990, appeals to the county to improve access to county buildings, including court buildings, have continually been ignored, Hull said, "and at a certain point I think we need to have the federal court order the county to bring the courthouse into compliance."

As evidence of a "lack of accessibility" at court buildings, the complaint lists: entryways, jury boxes and deliberation rooms, witness stands, speaking podiums, spectator seating areas, clerk counters, restrooms and drinking fountains, and the courthouse elevator.

Readers may recall the 2004 decision of the SCOTUS in the case of Lane v. Tennessee, which involved a suit against a state, rather than a county. This story at the time by the NYTs' Linda Greenhouse began:
States that fail to make their courthouses accessible to people with disabilities can be sued for damages under federal disability law, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a significant break from recent decisions that gave the states broad immunity from suit under various federal laws.

The 5-to-4 decision was a narrow one not only in the vote margin but also in the scope of the holding. Rather than validate, or even address, Congress's decision in the Americans With Disabilities Act to open the states to suit for failing to make accessible a broad array of public services and programs, Justice John Paul Stevens confined his majority opinion to the specific context presented by the case: access to court.

The case was brought by six disabled Tennessee residents, including a man who refused to crawl or be carried up to a second-floor courtroom in a county courthouse to answer a criminal traffic complaint. He sued after the state charged him with failing to appear for his hearing.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 6, 2010 09:07 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts