[NAGDU] Follow up about a discrimination complaint

[Peter Wolf]

Hello all.  

Back in February, I shared details of an incident in which both my guide dog and I faced discrimination, being refused service and ejected from a business.  

I filed an ADA Department of Justice complaint.  After considerable time a letter came, stating essentially, thank you for submitting a complaint…we receive a lot of complaints… this isn't serious enough… we are busy...sorry we can't help you.

The input from you guys: Marion, Tim Elder, and MIchael Hingson, was very helpful.  On your suggestions, I then filed with the Califonia Department of Education and Housing.   In their bureaucratic calendar, filing back in February resulted in an intake phone appointment…today. 

 The agent was clear, caring and excellent in distilling and referencing the complaint and incident material.  In case, God forbid, any of you folks ever need to waste the kind of time that I have put into this, yourselves, please remember in a discrimination incident how important it is to immediately document all details, interactions and sequences.  She was very appreciative of my having provided detail, and said that in most cases, they get the equivalent of a one-liner.  With this amount of detail, including that I had documented the incident with the local police at the time, they will treat it seriously.  My suggestion is that you do as I did - to open some form of voice recorder or dictation into an email to self in your phone, and immediately document sequential details at the time of the incident so that you don’t have to rely on fading memory later.  And do call in the police, or at a minimum, make a telephone incident report and get the incident report number, submission time and date.  

I documented how at first it seemed that the dog was being refused, but that on disclosing identity and purpose voluntarily for the dog, and that laws protect this, I also was told to leave.  Based on this aspect (rejection of the handler as well) they brought up and began inquiry on an additional complaint under Civil Rights.  This may result in two actions.  First would require the business to be put through training to educate and change behavior.  Secondly, there may be some form of monitary settlement.  She said that they have a legal team who will work on this, and that a settlement is often the only way to get attention and engagement in a solution.  

I mentioned NFB and NAGDU to the agent, and how we dialog how we periodically see violations like this.  She asked me to share with you all that they represent citizens actually in four areas:  They are: 

1.   Fair employment and housing violations 

2.  CC54 Civil code regarding Service Animals - ( which applies to this complaint)

3.  Hate crimes

4.  Unruh Civil Rights:  for Denial of service by a business, for age, race, religion, and possibly disability -  (which applied when I mentioned that I as the human handler was also refused service)

Finally, Michael, I mentioned your background and excellent strategy of behavioral training by having a bunch of service teams come into a business at once.  She got a good chuckle out of that and saw the value in it.  

Warm regards all for the holidays.

Peter




 

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