Opinion ID: 182444
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Unencountered Barriers

Text: Once standing based on encountering one barrier is established, [t]here remains a question . . . about the scope of barriers that [a plaintiff] may challenge. Doran, 524 F.3d at 1042. Expanding on the deterrent effect doctrine, Doran held that, once a plaintiff establishes that he encountered a barrier which deterred him from use and enjoyment of the facility, that plaintiff could then send an expert into the store to discover other ADA violations. 524 F.3d at 1043-44. The plaintiff was then deemed to have standing to challenge all discovered violations affecting his or her disability. Id. Doran reasoned: Given that an ADA plaintiff has standing because of deterrence from returning in the face of uncertainty, it is prudent to eliminate that uncertainty through the judicial device of discovery, thus allowing the plaintiff to obtain by formal means the information about the scope of the defendant's violations that he may have been unable to safely ascertain himself because of those same violations. Id. at 1043. Doran justified the constitutionality of this rule by stating we have been instructed to take a broad view of Article III standing in civil rights cases where private rights of action are the primary means of enforcing the statute. Id. Doran concluded that the list of barriers would then in total constitute the factual underpinnings of a single legal injury . . . [that] actually harmed the disabled person by deterring that disabled person from visiting a facility . . . . Id. at 1044. In other words, when a plaintiff is deterred from entering a facility because of non-ADA compliant barriers, all the barriers existing at the facility (known and unknown) can be construed as one injury of deterrence. Our holding in Doran reflects the necessity of deterrence: An ADA plaintiff who has encountered or has personal knowledge of at least one barrier related to his or her disability when he or she files a complaint, and who has been deterred from attempting to gain access to the public accommodation because of that barrier, has suffered an injury in fact for the purpose of Article III. An ADA plaintiff who has Article III standing as a result of at least one barrier at a place of public accommodation may, in one suit, permissibly challenge all barriers in that public accommodation that are related to his or her specific disability. 524 F.3d at 1047 (internal citation omitted, emphasis added). When a plaintiff is not deterred from returning to a facility, there is not a unification of barriers into one injury in fact constituting deterrence. Thus, there can be no standing to challenge unencountered barriers. Doran's reasoning did not require completely preclud[ing] a plaintiff from entering a facility in order to satisfy the imminent injury necessary for injunctive relief. Instead, the deterrence necessary for standing to challenge unencountered barriers in the context of Doran means, at a minimum, uncertainty about . . . other, potentially dangerous obstacles . . . to be encountered when the disabled persons return to the site after the `successful' conclusion of their suit. Such uncertainty is itself an actual, concrete and particularized injury. 524 F.3d at 1043. This uncertainty ensures that the plaintiff is not asking for an injunction based solely on past injuries, but is continuing to suffer the ongoing injury of deterrence. By not requiring deterrence before a plaintiff can conduct discovery to find barriers, the majority seeks to allow an ADA plaintiff to represent similarly situated plaintiffs, regardless of whether he would be injured (adversely affected) by the challenged barrier. Because Chapman repeatedly disavowed any deterrence resulted from the barriers he encountered, he experienced no unified injury and had no basis to challenge all unencountered barriers at Pier 1. Not only does such an expansion of standing violate the constitutional aspects of standing, as discussed above, but it also violates the prudential aspects of standing. In Doran, we recognized the question regarding the breadth of [an ADA plaintiff's] right to sue also implicates the prudential aspects of the standing doctrine. 524 F.3d at 1044 (citing Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 164, 117 S.Ct. 1154, 137 L.Ed.2d 281 (1997)). Prudential standing limits federal jurisdiction, including the general prohibition on a litigant's raising another person's legal rights, the rule barring adjudication of generalized grievances more appropriately addressed in the representative branches, and the requirement that a plaintiff's complaint fall within the zone of interests protected by the law invoked. Id. (quoting Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984)). Allowing a plaintiff to challenge barriers which never affected him in the past, which he had never considered at the time of filing the complaint, and of which he could easily learn by returning to a store (that he is not deterred from frequenting), runs afoul of the prudential principles against generalized grievances. As our sister circuit has explained, [t]he ADA does not permit private plaintiffs to bring claims as private attorneys general to vindicate other people's injuries. McInnis-Misenor v. Maine Med. Ctr., 319 F.3d 63, 69 (1st Cir.2003); see also Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 820, 117 S.Ct. 2312, 138 L.Ed.2d 849 (1997) ([W]e must put aside the natural urge to proceed directly to the merits of this important dispute and to `settle' it for the sake of convenience and efficiency. Instead, we must carefully inquire as to whether appellees have met their burden of establishing that their claimed injury is personal, particularized, concrete, and otherwise judicially cognizable.). Therefore, as the prior panel outlined, Chapman did not have standing as to unencountered barriers, because he was not deterred from returning to Pier 1. The lack of deterrence defeats Doran's justification for allowing unencountered barriers to be considered as one injury and allows Chapman to bring what amounts to generalized grievances against Pier 1.