Opinion ID: 182444
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Encountered Barriers

Text: In the ADA, Congress created a cause of action for disabled persons who experience discrimination through architectural barriers. 42 U.S.C. § 12101(a)(5). Congress may enact statutes creating legal rights, the invasion of which creates standing, even though no injury would exist without the statute. Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614, 617 n. 3, 93 S.Ct. 1146, 35 L.Ed.2d 536 (1973). This principle reflects Congress's ability to elevate  de facto injuries, otherwise not actionable at common law, into legally cognizable injuries. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 578, 112 S.Ct. 2130. For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 elevated an individual's personal interest in living in a racially integrated community to a cognizable legal injury if a private party denied that interest. Id. (citing Trafficante v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205, 208-12, 93 S.Ct. 364, 34 L.Ed.2d 415 (1972)). However, broadening of the categories of injury that may be alleged in support of standing is a different matter from abandoning the requirement that the party seeking review must himself have suffered an injury. Id. (quoting Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 738, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972)) (quotation marks and alteration omitted). Under the above articulated requirements for standing, I agree fully with the majority's ultimate holding that: Chapman leaves the federal court to guess which, if any, of the alleged violations deprived him of the same full and equal access that a person who is not wheelchair bound would enjoy when shopping at Pier One. Nor does he identify how any of the alleged violations threatens to deprive him of full and equal access due to his disability if he were to return to the Store, or how any of them deter him from visiting the Store due to his disability. Maj. Op. at 955. Requiring that an ADA plaintiff plead and prove that a barrier affects him by making access or enjoyment of a facility more difficult for him than for a non-disabled person satisfies Article III's requirement that an injury affect a plaintiff in a personal and individual way. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 n. 1, 112 S.Ct. 2130. However, I must disagree with the majority's statement that [w]here the [ADAAG defined] barrier is related to the particular plaintiff's disability, . . . an encounter with the barrier necessarily injures the plaintiff by depriving him of full and equal enjoyment of the facility. Maj. Op. at 947 n. 4. In this statement, the majority confuses a cognizable interest with an actual injury to that interest. To demonstrate that he has suffered an injury in fact, a plaintiff must establish an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. Doran, 524 F.3d at 1039 (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130). Thus, a plaintiff must allege more than encountering an ADAAG defined barrier in order to establish standing. See Lujan, 504 U.S. at 563, 112 S.Ct. 2130 ([T]he injury in fact test requires more than an injury to a cognizable interest. It requires that the party seeking review be himself among the injured. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); id. at 560 n. 1, 112 S.Ct. 2130 (By particularized, we mean that the injury must affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual way.); see also Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 501, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975) (Although Congress may grant a right to bring an action otherwise barred, the plaintiff still must allege a distinct and palpable injury to himself, even if it is an injury shared by a large class of other possible litigants.). To the extent the majority's analysis would have allowed Chapman to simply allege a specific encounter with an ADAAG barrier related to his disability to satisfy the injury in fact requirement for standing, it fails to meet the requirement that the encounter affect[s] the plaintiff in a personal and individual way, Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 n. 1, 112 S.Ct. 2130, and is no different than allowing standing for barriers not related to the plaintiff's disability. An encounter with an ADAAG defined barrier that a disabled person does not notice (or that does not affect the individual) is not a distinct and palpable injury. See Warth, 422 U.S. at 501, 95 S.Ct. 2197. The majority correctly points out that a barrier need not completely preclude the plaintiff from entering or from any use of the facility to give standing to the plaintiff. Maj. Op. at 947, See Fortyune, 364 F.3d at 1081-82. However, it is important that the encounter with the barrier adversely affect the plaintiff in some way to satisfy the particularized injury requirement for injury in fact. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 578, 112 S.Ct. 2130; Doran, 524 F.3d at 1042 n. 5 (Once a disabled individual has encountered or become aware of alleged ADA violations that deter his patronage of or otherwise interfere with his access to a place of public accommodation, he has already suffered an injury in fact. . . . (emphasis added)). An abstract injury (as suggested by the majority) is not enough. City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 101, 103 S.Ct. 1660, 75 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983). [C]laims of injury that are purely abstract, even if they might be understood to lead to `the psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees,' do not provide the kind of particular, direct, and concrete injury that is necessary to confer standing. . . . ASARCO, Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605, 616, 109 S.Ct. 2037, 104 L.Ed.2d 696 (1989) (internal citation omitted). Rather than merely pointing to a violation of the ADAAG, a plaintiff must also point to some type of personalized injury, whether the injury is objective (physical or economic) [1] or subjective (emotional or aesthetic). This requirement is consistent with precedent. For example, in Fortyune, the plaintiff who planned to return to the movie theater nevertheless was adversely affected, because he worried about his ability to sit with his wife, as was his right. See 364 F.3d at 1081. Given the language in Fortyune, a barrier's adverse effect on a plaintiff may encompass frustration, embarrassment, or physical difficulty with a barrier in addition to actually being deterred from entering a facility. Another example of a subjective adverse affect is the aesthetic injury relied upon by environmental plaintiffs to maintain standing. See Sierra Club, 405 U.S. at 734-35, 92 S.Ct. 1361. The majority misconstrues personalized injury as a solely subjective one that could give rise to vexatious litigation. [2] Majority Opinion at 948 n. 5. The majority ignores, however, that in addition to a personalized injury a plaintiff must also plead and prove the other two elements of standing in order to meet the standing requirements. An ADA plaintiff must show his injury is caused by a violation of the objective ADAAG standards and may be redressed by a favorable order from a court. See Pickern v. Holiday Quality Foods, Inc., 293 F.3d 1133, 1137 (9th Cir. 2002) ([Defendant's] noncompliance with [the ADA] has caused [plaintiff's] injury, and an injunction requiring [defendant] to comply with the ADA would redress it.). Thus, rather than leading to vexatious litigation, this is a higher standard from that announced by the majority. [3] In fact, the majority's statement that a simple encounter with a barrier is sufficient to confer standing collapses the injury in fact element of standing with the causation element. If the injury in fact element is an encounter with an ADA noncompliant barrier and the causation element is noncompliance with [the ADA], then, in reality, these two elements are now one and the majority has expanded standing under the ADA to render the three part test illusory. Lastly, to satisfy the requirement for a real and immediate threat of repeated injury required by Article III for injunctive relief, a plaintiff must also show an actual or imminent injury. Pickern, 293 F.3d at 1138. An actual or imminent injury occurs when a plaintiff has a concrete intent to return to a facility with a barrier which will continue to adversely affect his ability to benefit from or participate in the facility. Id.; see also Fortyune, 364 F.3d at 1081-82. As an alternative basis for an actual injury, this circuit has held that a plaintiff, who does not intend to return to a non-ADA compliant store because he is deterred by a barrier at the store, suffers an ongoing injury, redressable by injunctive relief. Pickern, 293 F.3d at 1138; D'Lil v. Best W. Encina Lodge & Suites, 538 F.3d 1031, 1036-37 (9th Cir.2008). In Pickern and D'Lil, plaintiffs' refusal to return to facilities where barriers existed was the injury that satisfied Lujan's requirement that the plaintiff be affected in a personal and individual way. In Fortyune, the personalized, ongoing adverse effect was the inability to sit next to a companion (i.e., enjoy full benefit of the facility). In either case, an injury in addition to the encounter with the barrier itself satisfied the actual or imminent injury requirement for injunctive relief. Under the above reasoning, the majority's holding that Chapman failed to identify how any of the alleged violations deprived him of the same full and equal access that a person who is not wheelchair bound would enjoy adequately reflects the requirements that an ADA plaintiff must plead and prove to show injury in fact sufficient to maintain standing. To be consistent with the Constitution, injury in fact for standing for injunctive relief under the ADA requires a plaintiff to (1) encounter or have knowledge of a barrier; (2) sufficiently allege that he or she was, at a minimum, adversely affected by the barrier; and (3) sufficiently allege either a concrete plan to return to the facility or that the adverse effect of the barrier deters the plaintiff from returning to the facility. To the extent that the majority would allow a simple encounter with an ADAAG barrier that does not deprive a plaintiff of the same full and equal access that a nondisabled person would enjoy at a facility to confer standing, it exceeds the confines of Article III and impermissibly allows plaintiffs to sue on behalf of others, rather then themselves.