In a blog post from February of this year, we discussed the case of Robles v. Domino’s Pizza, in which a blind man sued Domino’s in 2016 for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) 
after he was unable to order food from the pizza chain’s website using screen reading technology because the website lacked sufficient software compatibility capabilities. Because the ADA guarantees people with a disability “full and equal enjoyment of the goods and services … of any place of public accommodations,” the plaintiff claimed that he had been the victim of unlawful disability discrimination. Domino’s, on the other hand, argued that while the ADA applies to its brick-and-mortar locations, it does not apply to its website because a website is not defined in the ADA as a place of public accommodation.
In its decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with the plaintiff, finding that the ADA protects not just restaurants, hotels, stores, and other physical “brick and mortar” locations, but also the “services of a public accommodation,” notably websites and apps. The Court then found that Domino’s violated Title III of the ADA because its website’s incompatibility with screen reader software impeded access to the goods and services of its physical pizza franchises. Notably, this decision was the first by any U.S. Court of Appeals Continue reading
yee’s sexual orientation. The third case, 
In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Auer v. Robbins, establishing the standard for what has become known as Auer deference (or Seminole Rock Deference from Bowles v. Seminole Rock and Sand Co. (1945)). This decision and the standard it set is significant for employers because it gives substantial latitude to federal agencies, like the Department of Labor, to interpret their own ambiguous standards. Specifically, in Auer, the Supreme Court held that an Agency’s, in this case the Department of Labor, interpretation of its own standards is “controlling unless ‘plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.’” In other words, if it’s not clear what is required by the plain language of the standard, the Court will generally defer to the Agency’s own reasonable interpretations of its regulations.