Public Accommodations Research Articles

Mapping Multilevel Contributions to the Sexual Victimization of Trans Women and Trans Feminine People: A Qualitative Intersectional Stigma Analysis

ABSTRACT We aimed to characterize and conceptually organize multilevel factors associated with the sexual victimization experiences of trans women and trans feminine people to advance violence prevention interventions for health-equity. Between October 2020 and July 2021, we conducted in-depth interviews with 17 expert informants in New York City, which we transcribed, coded, and analyzed. Qualitative insights were derived through an intensive, team-based iterative coding strategy resulting in the development of an exhaustive set of consensus codes which were organized and interpreted in a multi-level structure. Findings revealed a complex constellation of intersecting macro- and micro-structural mechanisms reinforcing sexual violence. Unique characteristics of this violence were characterized hierarchically in terms of: 1) violence forms (e.g. murder, fetishization), 2) perpetrators (e. g. safety-staff; group assault), 3) contexts (e.g. public accommodations), 4) functions (e.g. gender policing), 5) ideological reinforcers (e.g. transphobia, racism), and 6) structural reinforcers (e.g. legislation; linking access to material means of survival to poverty/illness). Results indicate that acute incidents of sexual victimization are “the tip of the iceberg” of the violence impacting trans communities. The community experts we interviewed (e.g. trans women, violence prevention practitioners, social workers) understand chronic functional, ideological, and structural oppression as inextricable from sexual violence. Multi-level determinants of violence therefore constitute essential targets of sexual violence prevention intervention for this population.

Civil Rights vs Creative Expression: Anti-Discrimination and Free Speech in Public Accommodation

In the case of 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the US Supreme Court allowed a graphic design business to refuse to create wedding websites for queer couples. The issue of marginalized groups being able to access services and public accommodations without facing discrimination has been a question within US judicial systems for decades now. This paper seeks to examine the historical context of accessible public accommodations, past verdicts relevant to this case as well as the implications of the current Supreme Court decision to analyse the future of the balance between civil rights and creative expression in the United States.

Creative Incoherence: 303 Creative and First Amendment Exemptions to Antidiscrimination Law

Abstract In 303 Creative, the US Supreme Court examined the conflict between state laws designed to protect gay persons from stigmatic and material harm in the public marketplace and the First Amendment freedoms of business owners who objected to same-sex marriage on religious grounds. Writing for the majority, Justice Gorsuch concluded, “When a state public accommodations law and the Constitution collide, there can be no question which must prevail.” In this essay, I use two elements of late philosopher John Rawls’s Political Liberalism (2005)—the “criterion of reciprocity” and “liberty and integrity of the person”—to better understand the broad implications of the court’s ruling. My analysis reveals that the majority opinion in 303 Creative fails to acknowledge the need for achieving a coherent scheme of liberty within a liberal democracy and, in so doing, it undermines, rather than furthers, pluralism. Additionally, the logic of the court’s ruling produces incoherent and inconsistent results—results that simultaneously expand and contract religious freedom and unjustifiably treat sexual-orientation discrimination differently from other types of odious discrimination. However, supplanting the court’s approach with Rawls’s “criterion of reciprocity” provides a coherent and consistent adjudicatory method for balancing religious freedom and the demands of equal citizenship. Furthermore, the argument I offer comports with legal analyses that focus on religious exemptions and third-party harm and the value of equal citizenship in religious liberty debates. Thus, my work supplements existing arguments against religious exemptions to antidiscrimination law and provides another substantive rejoinder to those seeking to scale back civil rights.

Discrimination, Private Liberty, and Public Accommodations Law

Discrimination, Private Liberty, and Public Accommodations Law

303 Creative, Public Accommodations Law, and the Many Possible Futures of Rights

303 Creative, Public Accommodations Law, and the Many Possible Futures of Rights

Learn about disability rights lawsuit before the Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in the case of Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer (https://bit.ly/45QuEAS). The case could curb activists’ ability to bring lawsuits against hotels and other places to ensure they are accessible and compliant with the ADA. The plaintiff, a woman with a disability, served as a “tester” and analyzed hundreds of hotels websites to identify whether they included accessibility information mandated by the ADA. She filed more than 600 lawsuits against small hotels and other places of public accommodation.

Advocacy for patients with opioid use disorder: A primer for physicians and other clinicians on the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Americans with opioid use disorder (OUD) have a disability that is protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Physicians may observe ADA violations when patients are forced to stop taking medications for opioid use disor-der (MOUD) as part of an entity's blanket policy that prohibits MOUD or when patients are denied medical treatment for various illnesses due to having an OUD diagnosis and/or receiving MOUD. Physicians and patients are likely unaware of how to identify potential ADA violations or what to do when they encounter one. This article will explain the ADA and how its protections are applicable to patients with OUD using several case examples. Physicians will learn to recognize possi-ble ADA violations and how to file a report with the Assistant United States Attorney. The article will outline how previous ADA settlements have addressed barriers to MOUD treatment access and highlight the need for more clinicians to serve as advocates to ensure all public entities and accommodations are in compliance with the ADA as it pertains to patients with OUD.

Americans with disabilities act cases initiated by individuals with cochlear implants in the United States

ObjectiveThe Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that forbids discrimination against individuals with certain disabilities, including hearing impairment. This study aimed to determine the nature of ADA discrimination complaints in individuals with cochlear implants. MethodsA search for court decisions containing the terms “cochlear implant” and (“Americans with Disabilities Act” or “ADA”) from 1985 to 2021 was performed with the Westlaw Campus Research legal database. Cases were included and analyzed if at least one of the plaintiffs had a cochlear implant and was claiming discrimination related to their hearing impairment based on the ADA. Results24 cases initiated between 2003 and 2021 in 19 US states were identified based on inclusion criteria. The highest number of cases occurred in California (N = 4, 16.7 %). The alleged discrimination most frequently took place at a K-12 school (N = 9, 37.5 %), workplace (N = 7, 29.2 %), or during an encounter with police/correctional officers (N = 4, 16.7 %). Fourteen (58.3 %) cases involved complaints under Title II (Public Services) of the ADA. Seven (29.2 %) involved Title I (Employment) and 4 (16.7 %) involved Title III (Public Accommodations). Summary judgment was given in favor of the defendant or the case was dismissed entirely in 16 (66.7 %) of the cases. ConclusionPatients with cochlear implants are still at risk of discrimination because of their disability. Cochlear implantees, school employees, workplace supervisors, and law enforcement personnel can benefit from ADA education.

Moving Beyond the Basics of the ADA and Section 504: Opportunities for Equitable and Inclusive Access to Law Libraries, Collections, and Services

The law library plays a role in the lives of people with disabilities by facilitating their full participation in society. Providing equitable access for persons with disabilities to library facilities and services is required by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), applicable state and local statutes, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). The ADA was created to eliminate discrimination in many areas, and most libraries are covered by the ADA’s Title I (Employment), Title II (Government Programs and Services), and Title III (Public Accommodations). Section 504 is another federal law designed to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Education. Recipients of this federal financial assistance include institutions of higher education. This article provides a brief overview of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and why law libraries must comply with these laws to provide equitable access for persons with disabilities. Although the traditional view of access is defined as physical access to the library or the building it resides in, this article asserts that equitable and inclusive access to the law library should be aligned with the expectations of the ADA and Section 504. Law libraries should employ a more holistic approach and reexamine how they define and apply accessibility to their collections, programs, and services.

The Issue of Protection of Disabled Persons Rights

This article covers the present condition of disability rights in the United States, focusing on the continued obstacles experienced by those with disa-bilities in the workplace, public spaces, and sporting venues. Despite the fact that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) offers extensive safeguards for those with impairments, these provisions are seldom implemented. In 2019, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission re-ceived over 24,000 complaints of disability-related employment discrimina-tion, illustrating the persistent difficulties experienced by handicapped work-ers. In addition, the United States Department of Justice received approxi-mately 8,000 complaints involving accessibility issues in public areas, under-scoring the ongoing need for stricter enforcement of laws governing public accessibility. Participation in sports has been proven to provide substantial advantages for those with disabilities, but it remains difficult to ensure that sports facilities are really accessible and inclusive. According to the article's premise, full application and enforcement of disability rights laws in the United States requires more education and awareness among employers, public accommodations, and sports management.

“Stamping Out Segregation in Kansas”: Jim Crow Practices and the Postwar Black Freedom Struggle

Abstract: This study examines Jim Crow practices and the Black Freedom Struggle in Kansas between 1945 and 1960, focusing at the state level. It proceeds in three sections. First, it examines Jim Crow in housing, employment, schools, public accommodations, and sundown towns. Second, it addresses the enforcement of these practices through mob violence and, to a greater degree, police violence. Third, it investigates the activism of Black Kansans who were, irrespective of age, gender, or class, determined to destroy Jim Crow through public protests, legal strategies, and physical self-defense, even if they represented considerable ideological, methodological, and strategic diversity. The study is based primarily on extensive research in regional and local newspapers, in public and university archives, and in oral histories with contemporary Black activists. Because of the limited time period involved, it utilizes a topical approach overall but, within this framework, addresses change over time. Before proceeding, the study briefly examines the long history of racism against Blacks and Black resistance to it in Kansas before 1945.

Gettysburg 1963: Civil Rights, Cold War Politics, and Historical Memory in America’s Most Famous Small Town by Jill Ogline Titus

Reviewed by: Gettysburg 1963: Civil Rights, Cold War Politics, and Historical Memory in America’s Most Famous Small Town by Jill Ogline Titus Erin Krutko Devlin (bio) Gettysburg 1963: Civil Rights, Cold War Politics, and Historical Memory in America’s Most Famous Small Town. By Jill Ogline Titus. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. 264. Cloth, $95.00; paper, $27.95.) As Jill Ogline Titus reminds readers in Gettysburg 1963, newspaper coverage of the Civil War centennial was distributed alongside stories about the burgeoning Black freedom struggle and debates about Cold War politics and policies. Gettysburg 1963 strives to help readers understand how these threads of American cultural and political life converged on the Gettysburg battlefield, illuminating a contested landscape in which commemorative rhetoric was shaped by a desire to forge a memory of 1863 that could be mobilized in service of a wide range of social and political aims one hundred years later. Titus notes that formal commemorative bodies, such as the U.S. Civil War Centennial Commission, often sought to mobilize a reconciliation-ist vision of the war that emphasized military valor, technological progress, and reunification, which served the broader purpose of reanimating American patriotism and encouraging heritage tourism in the midst of the Cold War. Yet Titus also notes that this narrative was never unchallenged in the commemorative activity surrounding the centennial. She illustrates how an emancipatory memory of the war as a “new birth of freedom” sought to frame the conflict through the lens of racial justice during the civil rights movement, while Lost Cause rhetoric was mobilized to recast resistance to desegregation as the preservation of states’ rights. As Titus demonstrates, both of these alternative strands of memory also sought to tether their memorial claims to the politics of the Cold War, with those promoting an emancipationist vision arguing that the failure to address racial injustice undercut the nation’s position as a beacon of democracy, and those promoting the Lost Cause narrative contending that opposition to civil rights legislation served as a bulwark against government overreach and totalitarianism. Titus argues that these divergent and diverse approaches to memorializing Gettysburg meant that commemorative activities at the battlefield in 1963 “were employed simultaneously to champion racial equality, legitimize midcentury anti-government sentiments and activities, and strengthen the U.S. position internationally” (5). Gettysburg 1963 is focused on official commemorative activity— speeches, pageants, exhibits, and battlefield reenactments—but Titus evocatively notes that participants and visitors exposed to these divergent [End Page 274] interpretations of the war were not passive spectators. “Participants,” she writes, “did not simply absorb the commemoration’s messaging wholesale, but rather made decisions about where and how to participate (and what ideas to embrace) that ensured a variety of different takeaways about the connections between 1863 and 1963” (84). Indeed, Titus concludes that the divergent commemorative narratives presented during the centennial substantially disrupted the reconciliationist rhetoric promoted by the U.S. Civil War Centennial Commission and Gettysburg National Military Park in 1963, with both emancipationist and Lost Cause narratives rising in prominence in the years that followed. Titus explores public reception of these competing strands of memory most directly in her discussion of audience attendance at or reaction to various pageants, roundtables, and public addresses. She is particularly attentive to local participation in commemorative activities on the battlefield’s national stage. Indeed, Gettysburg 1963 examines how national debate about the meaning and memory of the Civil War battle played out locally in the community of Gettysburg itself and nearby Gettysburg College, where Titus currently serves as associate director of the Civil War Institute. Titus notes that local residents had a particular stake in the way the centennial was positioned in relation to heritage tourism and were invested in debates about the appropriate balance between commercialization and battlefield preservation as they sought to harness the economic potential of the centennial. Titus also demonstrates how the borough struggled with its own history of racial segregation and discrimination. The international attention focused on Gettysburg in 1963 provided the local Black community with the leverage needed to push white business owners toward the meaningful desegregation of public accommodations. Gettysburg 1963 will resonate most powerfully for...

White Men’s Law: The Roots of Systemic Racism by Peter Irons

Reviewed by: White Men’s Law: The Roots of Systemic Racism by Peter Irons William H. Chafe White Men’s Law: The Roots of Systemic Racism. By Peter Irons. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. xx, 291. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-091494-3.) Peter Irons has written a powerful overview of systemic racism in the United States. A retired scholar of constitutional law, he brings passion, insight, and a lifetime of personal experience fighting racism to this extraordinary assessment of just how little progress this country has made—despite pretensions to the contrary—toward eliminating racism in American society. White Men’s Law: The Roots of Systemic Racism begins with a detailed chronicle of how, in 1935, a deputy sheriff in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, personally presided over the lynching of a Black man named Rubin Stacy. A white woman claimed that Stacy had threatened her with assault. The white deputy captured Stacy, tied a clothesline around his neck, hung him from a tree branch, and then led the white crowd as they fired bullets into his dead body. This story highlights the underlying theme of Irons’s book: how our legal system—and the law itself—have sustained “race [as] the one factor that has most divided the country for more than four centuries” (p. 18). It was not always so. Irons points out that in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson spoke of the “horror” of slavery, saying that the “execrable commerce” of that institution should end (p. 32). But those words never appeared in any official document, and slavery became a centerpiece of southern society. Indeed, Irons blames the eruption of the Civil War on “the legal system and its judiciary” (p. 59). Despite the hopes of Black Americans and some white northerners for major changes after emancipation, Irons recounts that during Reconstruction, “only 20 percent of Blacks—most of them younger—claimed to be literate” (p. 83). Nor did the legal system help. In United States v. Cruikshank (1875), the Supreme Court struck down the Enforcement Acts that were enacted to uphold the Reconstruction Amendments, declining to hold white terrorists accountable for the murders of Black voters. Upon his election as governor of South Carolina in 1890, Benjamin R. Tillman “lauded ‘the triumph of democracy and white supremacy over mongrelism and anarchy’” (p. 101). Tillman also declared that southerners had “‘reorganized the Democratic Party with one plank and only one plank, namely, that this is a white man’s country and the white man must govern it’” (p. 103). This process continued as the Supreme Court “gutted the ‘public accommodations’ provisions of the 1875 Civil Rights Act” in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) and paved the way for segregated schools in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (p. 105). As a result, Irons writes, “Black children in the South . . . were robbed of decent educations by White men in black robes” (p. 110). By 1900, “Only 45 percent of Black adults were literate, compared to 95 percent of Whites,” and in the 1890s, “at least 1,100 Blacks were lynched, more than two every week” (p. 113). [End Page 337] Beginning with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, positive changes slowly accumulated. An “informal group known as the ‘Black Cabinet,’” composed of forty-five Black federal officials, came into being (p. 139). Irons notes that this group especially sought to ensure that a proportionate number of Black Americans received relief from New Deal programs—a goal in which “they achieved some success” (p. 139). He also notes an increase in the literacy rate among Black people to 84 percent by 1940. And he describes how, finally, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that segregated schools were unconstitutional. Still, racism remained systemic. In 1960, 55 percent of Black Americans lived in poverty, and Black income was only 55 percent that of whites. Although these figures improved in the 2000s, the fact of two different societies “one black, one white—separate and unequal,” as the Kerner Commission declared in 1968, remained a central American reality (p. 213). With passion and power, Irons documents the role of law and the...

The Right to Have Property

Laura Underkuffler has kindly commented on my progressive, social- relations approach to property and property law. I feel humbled, honored, and seen. She notices the core moral commitments manifested in that work. She focuses on my scholarship on discrimination in public accommodations, the violent dispossession and persisting sovereignty of Native nations, and the obligations of the rich toward the poor. She emphasizes my willingness to take a moral stance. And she comments on the fact that I attempt to persuade readers about what the law should be, not just by interpreting authoritative texts, but by making normative arguments that are built on stories. She ponders the role of stories in the legal system. Well, here are some stories, and here are some moral stances.

Race and Contemporary Perceptions of Public Accommodations Inequality

Reginald A. Byron on reports of poor service.

Do the Relocated Residents Differ from Public Residents in Rent Overdue? The Case of DKI Jakarta Public Rental Housing

Housing problems in urban areas are very critical. The increased population growth in DKI Jakarta and the high migration rate from rural to urban areas cause slums. Slums are generated because many households do not have place to live and populate in unauthorized and inappropriate regions. More than 50% of households in DKI Jakarta have yet to own any housing property. In addition, the housing backlog in DKI Jakarta reached 302.319 in 2017. Therefore, housing problems in urban areas are very critical. One way to overcome this issue is to provide a public rental housing program for relocated and general residents with low income—the relocated residents' objective of moving to public rental housing, as they are the victims. The residents lost their livelihoods, the economy was challenging, and it took time to get a job. So, relocated residents in rental public housing are known to have high overdue rent. Previous research about the effectiveness of relocating to public rental accommodations rental public lodgings is minimal. Therefore, public housings create higher rent due in Jakarta. This research's objective is to compare the relocated and general residents in terms of rent overdue in DKI Jakarta public housing. This research analyzes demographic data and public housing rent overdue in 2022. The method used in this research is quantitative with Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression. The analyzed regression shows that rental public housing status influences rent overdue, and residents with the status relocated residents are more prone to pay the rent overdue, compared to the public residents.

Changing Perspectives: Black-Jewish Relations in Houston during the Civil Rights Era by Allison E. Schottenstein

Reviewed by: Changing Perspectives: Black-Jewish Relations in Houston during the Civil Rights Era by Allison E. Schottenstein Marni Davis Allison E. Schottenstein. Changing Perspectives: Black-Jewish Relations in Houston during the Civil Rights Era. Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2021. 415 pp. During the postwar era, a significant proportion of whites who participated in civil rights actions and organizations were American Jews of European descent. This phenomenon has given rise to popular assumptions of a civil rights–era political alliance—a “golden age” of Black-Jewish relations, inspired by a shared history of marginalization and common liberal political leanings. But such notions beg for closer and more critical examination. The history of interactions between Blacks and Jews in the United States has been shaped by immense socioeconomic disparities that have influenced their conceptions of one another, often generating tensions between them, since the abolition of slavery. Black Americans and white American Jews have also disagreed on political issues like immigration, urban renewal, and Zionism, which unsettles the idea of an uncomplicated Black-Jewish coalition. Indeed, the very concept of “Black-Jewish relations” might conceal more than it illuminates, as it suggests an inherent distinction between the two categories and overlooks the historical presence of individuals and communities who identified as both. But any historical analysis of this subject should also include consideration of geographic region. Most historical studies of Blacks and Jews have focused on the cities of the American North and Midwest. In Changing Perspectives, Allison E. Schottenstein looks south, applying the framework of Black-Jewish relations to the history of Houston, Texas, in the twentieth century. Today the most enthnoracially diverse city in the South, Houston has been a central player in the Sunbelt’s postwar economic growth. But Jim Crow was a totalizing force there midcentury, as it was throughout the region, and Black Houstonians were consistently obstructed from sharing the benefits of the city’s growth. Houston’s small Jewish population, on the other hand, found general social acceptance and significant upward mobility throughout the Jim Crow era—in no small measure because they were of European origin, and could avail themselves of neighborhoods, schools, and other civic amenities limited to whites. Still, many Jews feared that their acceptance was provisional, their status vulnerable; for this reason, or perhaps because they simply accepted the racial hierarchy from which they benefited, the Jews of Houston were peripheral players in the city’s civil rights movement. [End Page 205] With a focus on the actions of communal leadership and elected officials, Schottenstein’s community-study approach provides a detailed top-down account of Jewish Houston’s internal discourse on race and politics. (Her study of the city’s African American leadership and institutions is far less thorough and consistent.) A few of Houston’s Jewish leaders had expressed support for racial desegregation in schools and other public accommodations, even before Brown v. Board of Education, and were enthusiastic participants in municipal organizations that advocated interracial cooperation. But the larger community’s approach to the subject had been “to take a back seat” in the movement proper, to “leave the vocal roles to others” (103). The principal reason for their unwillingness to take a public stand on the matter, Schottenstein contends, was unease. Houston’s Jews encountered social antisemitism in the form of restrictive covenants and exclusionary elite country clubs. In moments of local anti-Communist fervor, they were blamed for “creeping socialism” because of Jewish participation in liberal interracial organizations. Occasionally, more vicious and frightening forms of antisemitism surfaced, as when George Lincoln Rockwell, the American Nazi Party founder who blamed Jewish Communists for racial integration, came to town. They also feared violence, and not without cause; in early 1960—a few years after a rash of synagogue bombings throughout the Southeast—Houston’s Congregation Emanu El suffered a bomb threat, and a swastika was graffitied on a nearby Jewish-owned grocery. Anxious that their status and their physical safety were conditioned on their willingness to abet white supremacy, Houston’s Jewish leadership, with a few exceptions, tended toward silence. They distanced themselves from those who spoke out, took a gradualist approach to the desegregation...

The Law Is Enforced by ADR Processes. They Work

Into its fourth decade, the Americans with Disabilities Act has taken its place alongside the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a successful step in addressing discriminatory conduct in the United States. The law prohibits discrimination in hiring and on the job, in governmental and public activities, transportation, at public accommodations like hotels, restaurants, and theaters, and ensures access to telecommunications systems for speech and hearing impaired individuals.

Public Accommodations and the First Amendment: 303 Creative and "Pure Speech"

Public Accommodations and the First Amendment: 303 Creative and "Pure Speech"

Training a Public Accommodations Lens on Vaccine Passports

Training a Public Accommodations Lens on Vaccine Passports