[OAGDU] FW: [NAGDU] A federal judge was refused a Lyft ride with his guide dog.

Tue Apr 25 15:38:49 UTC 2023

I wish something could be done about this. It just seems to be an ongoing
problem.

-----Original Message-----
From: NAGDU <nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Sarah Calhoun via NAGDU
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2023 3:32 PM
To: 'NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users'
<nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Sarah Calhoun <sc-tico at att.net>
Subject: [NAGDU] A federal judge was refused a Lyft ride with his guide dog.

>From the Washington Post

A federal judge was refused a Lyft ride with his guide dog. He's not alone.

U.S. Judge David Tatel had hailed a ride to court, but as soon as he got
into his Lyft, he said the driver got out and began shouting that he would
not take Tatel's guide dog

By Rachel Weiner
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/rachel-weiner/?itid=ai_top_weinerre> 

Updated April 21, 2023 at 11:21 a.m. EDT|Published April 20, 2023 at 6:00
a.m. EDT

Judge David Tatel stands at his desk inside his chambers as his service dog,
Vixen, lays on the floor at the U.S. District Court for D.C. in 2021. (Matt
McClain/The Washington Post)

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David Tatel and his wife had just left a discussion of blindness in the
Torah. He was headed from a Cleveland Park synagogue to the U.S. Court of
Appeals in D.C., where he serves as a senior judge. But as soon as he got
into his Lyft, Tatel said the driver got out and began shouting that he
would not take his guide dog.

"He went totally nuts; he screamed at us," Tatel recalled of being berated
with his German shepherd, Vixen. "You would have thought we were asking him
to carry plutonium."

Refusing to accommodate service dogs is a violation of the Americans With
Disabilities Act, as well as the D.C. Human Rights Act, as Tatel's wife
tried to explain to the driver. Tatel knows those laws well - in his three
decades on one of the most influential appeals courts in the nation, he has
written opinions on discrimination impacting institutions from
<https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.copaa.org/resource/resmgr/docs/accessible_2017/ne
w_DL_opinion-1.pdf> D.C. public schools to the
<https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/07-5101/07-5101-
1128299-2011-03-24.html> U.S. Foreign Service. But in the moment, he said,
he felt as anyone would being shouted at on the street and refused service.

"It's embarrassing; it's humiliating to be rejected for something because
you're blind," he said. "I've been blind a long time; I've had a lot of
experiences. This was like nothing else."

Moira Shea and her new guide dog, Cormac, cross Connecticut Avenue NW near
the Woodley Park Metro in D.C. To the left is the yellow Labrador's trainer,
Kathryn Roberts of Leader Dogs for the Blind. (John Kelly/The Washington
Post)

Such incidents, however, are not uncommon, according to the National
Federation of the Blind (NFB). Six years ago, both Lyft and Uber settled
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/10/uber-sued-for
-allegedly-refusing-rides-to-the-blind-and-putting-a-dog-in-the-trunk/?itid=
lk_inline_manual_8> lawsuits brought by the organization, making
<https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.280572.84.0.pdf>
commitments to stop
<https://nfb.org/images/nfb/documents/pdf/uber-and-lyft/final-lyft-settlemen
t-agreement-and-addendum.pdf> working with drivers who have refused to
transport service dogs and to investigate claims of discrimination.
(Individual suits against the companies are stymied by terms of service that
require riders to settle complaints through arbitration.)

Both agreements ended after three years with unclear impact because only
Uber provided data and only during the litigation. In 2019, the company
<https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.280572/gov.uscour
ts.cand.280572.210.0.pdf> counted 5,460 complaints of service animal
discrimination, saying that represented an 11 percent decline from 2017.

The NFB has collected its own data indicating denials have increased but
acknowledges these voluntary surveys are incomplete.

"We're all frustrated; we haven't gotten to where we need to be," National
Federation of the Blind President Mark Riccobono said. The group wants
"internal reporting, tracking of data and some transparency to the community
about the data."

In 2021, Uber introduced a new service called UberPet that costs about $5
extra; blind riders say it has made the problem worse because drivers will
insist they use that service. (Both Uber and Lyft say their policy is that
riders with guide dogs do not have to use UberPet.)

"I'm constantly having to say this is not a pet, this is not a chihuahua -
this is a service dog," said Karen Petrou, a financial policy analyst who
travels often for work.

Uber says it has a zero-tolerance policy for "confirmed instances" that a
driver knowingly refused to take a service animal.

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Lyft says it parts ways with drivers who "knowingly" violate the policy
after one confirmed or two alleged incidents. Both say in their policies
that "allergies, religious objections, or a generalized fear of animals" are
not valid reasons to refuse riders with service animals.

In the NFB litigation, Uber said that few drivers are repeat offenders,
indicating proper enforcement. The NFB said that was more likely a
reflection of how rare it would be for a driver to be matched with multiple
service dog users.

But both companies maintain that they are not legally responsible for
compliance with the law because they are not providing transportation, just
technology connecting individual drivers and riders.

Riccobono said that "every court which has considered the question has
determined that these companies are subject to the Americans With
Disabilities Act."

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One such ruling was
<https://www.washlaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ERC-v-UBER-MTD-Decision.
pdf> written in 2021 by Tatel's former colleague Ketanji Brown Jackson, 
pdf> who
now sits on the U.S. Supreme Court, in a lawsuit against Uber over
wheelchair accessibility.

New litigation is possible. Advocacy groups have encouraged reporting
incidents to the Justice Department, which has sued both Uber and Lyft over
treatment of people with disabilities in the past.

Liz Bottner has been dutifully reporting her denied rides - 36 since
September, including both an Uber and a Lyft on Christmas Eve.

The agency responded each time by email that they "unfortunately do not have
the resources to take direct action" for that report.

"I don't know what the magic number is that they'll decide it's an issue,"
Bottner said.

Olivia Norman says that after years of rejection she has given up and
started using more expensive private car services.

Olivia Norman and her guide dog, Tofu, with cherry blossoms in D.C. Norman
says she has given up on using ride-share apps after having too many drivers
refuse to take her with her dog. (Kayla Payne)

"I refuse to spend my money on companies that discriminate against me," she
said. Her last bad experience was in January, when she was trying to get
across D.C. for a brunch celebrating her new job at the Department of
Veterans Affairs. She says the driver saw her, shouted that he didn't take
pets and drove off.

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"It turns good moments into angry moments," she said.

Taxis are regulated by city agencies and can be penalized for
discrimination. But unlike cabs speeding away, cancellations by ride-share
drivers are logged online.

"These companies have some pretty powerful technology," Riccobono said. "We
need them to use that technology to make recording and reporting of these
incidents faster and easier, and connect blind people to resources if they
are stranded."

Sometimes those records become their own problem. Blind passengers have had
to fight fees claiming they never showed up; during the pandemic several
people said they were falsely flagged as refusing to wear a mask. Petrou
said that after a recent trip to the Cosmos Club where a "terrible driver"
resisted taking her guide dog, Lyft warned her she had been reported as a
rude passenger. To get that off her record, she had to call and complain.

Advertisement

"I could be cut off from the service," she said.

Moira Shea, who was the first congressional aide to
<https://19thnews.org/2023/03/moira-shea-guide-dog-senate-floor-blindness-ac
cessibility/> bring a guide dog on the Senate floor, said that early in the
pandemic a driver falsely told Uber that she was not wearing a mask; after
that she began taking pictures of herself before getting in cars. She's
fought the company over multiple alleged violations.

"There are some people who don't like blind people, who don't like women and
don't like dogs," she said. "When you get in a car with someone like that,
it's trouble."

Uber said the company "investigates every report of a service animal denial
and takes appropriate action" on "a case-by-case basis." Until April 2022,
riders reported for not wearing masks were required to take a masked selfie
before riding again; Uber said "no action was taken" to limit Shea's ability
to use the app.

The NFB suggested improvements to Uber as the settlement was expiring,
including better education for drivers, translating the policy into
different languages, and rewards for compliance. But Uber was
<https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.280572/gov.uscour
ts.cand.280572.213.0.pdf> not required to adopt those ideas.

"Plaintiffs do not allege that Uber failed to comply with the terms of the
Settlement," a federal judge in California wrote, "but simply complain that
service animal discrimination remains pervasive."

This story has been updated to clarify Tatel's encounter with the Lyft
driver.

464Comments

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