Article updated
This article has been updated since it was first published on May 31, 2023. The most recent update was added on November 14, 2024. Read the updates for this article.
On May 26, 2023 a jury in Los Angeles, California awarded two blind students a little over $240,000.00 in their lawsuit against the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD).
The suit was filed in 2017 by students Roy Payan and Portia Mason under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act for discrimination Payan and Mason experienced when they were denied accessible course materials and accessible software (including MyMathLab). One of Mr. Payan’s professor told him blind students weren’t welcome in his class at the school.
Before filing their lawsuit, the students tried in vain to convince the LACCD to give them the accessible tools and content they needed to succeed in their programs.
Congratulations to Mr. Payan and Ms. Mason, the National Federation of the Blind and its California affiliate who supported the case and were also plaintiffs, and to lawyers for the blind students, the law firm of Brown Goldstein & Levy and The Barbosa Group.
Jessie Weber is a partner at Brown Goldstein & Levy:
We are grateful that the jury held LACCD accountable for failing to provide an equal educational opportunity to blind students. We hope other institutions of higher learning will take heed: failing to ensure accessibility — including by maintaining inaccessible websites and educational resources—is unlawful discrimination. Jessie Weber, a partner at Brown Goldstein & Levy and co-leader of the legal team
Read Brown Goldstein & Levy’s article about the jury verdict on the firm website.
Winding road to the jury trail
This is the rare digital accessibility lawsuit in the United States that makes it all the way to a jury trial. The case had a (very) long and winding path to get to the jurors.
Mr. Payan and fellow student Portia Mason won their case in 2019, proving to the judge that textbooks, websites, databases, computer applications and other course materials were not accessible to them as screen-reader users. Read the NFB’s 2019 press release announcing the court victory.
Instead of accepting the judge’s order, the community college district appealed.
On appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals the students, supported by the NFB, won again! Read the 9th Circuit Opinion here.
When that happened, the Community College District still did not accept the court’s opinion and decided to continue fighting the students’ claims. Shockingly, this publicly-funded school district threatened to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
LACCD was poised to make a dangerous argument limiting the types of cases disabled students can file under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. With a strong conservative majority on the court, the District’s arguments could have significantly weakened these two foundational disability civil rights laws in the United States.
In December 2021 the disability community mounted a national advocacy campaign to convince LACCD not to take the case to the Supreme Court. The advocacy effort was successful and the LACCD abandoned its effort to bring the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Read about the advocacy campaign on the website of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)
- Read Disability Rights California’s Press Release, Disability Leaders Call on Los Angeles Community College District to Abandon Reckless Petition to Supreme Court in Accessible Education Case. As described in the release, the late, great Judith Heumann was involved in the campaign.
What’s next?
Once the community college district’s appeals were over, the case returned to the District Court to damages. Last week’s jury verdict of over $240,000.00 for Mr. Payan and Ms Mason was the result. Now the judge will be deciding other issues, including the scope of a court order that will (finally) ensure that blind students of LACCD are able to fully participate in the school’s courses.
I’m frustrated that the Los Angeles Community College District spent public money to fight this case at every turn. And I’m grateful for the advocacy of the blind students, the NFB, the legal team, and the broader disability community that made the victories in this case possible.
Whatever happens next, this verdict sends a strong message to every higher education institution in the United States about the need for accessible software, course materials, websites, and other digital content. This verdict, along with the recent “Dear Colleague Letter” from the United States Departments of Justice and Education, confirm that digital accessibility is a necessary component of educational civil rights for disabled people.
The time for excluding blind and disabled students from higher education is over. Digital accessibility makes inclusion possible. The Payan case demonstrates that accessibility is not just the right thing to do. It’s the law.
Updates to this article
November 14, 2024 Update
As discussed above, the jury in this case decided that the Los Angeles Community College District should pay two blind students over $240,000.00 because they were not given accessible course materials and were otherwise discriminated against.
But a jury verdict is never the end of the road. The judge in the case has the power to review the money awarded and determine if it is appropriate. Here, the judge in the case is Stephen Wilson. He has been “on the bench” since 1985.
Judge Wilson was appointed by Ronald Reagan.
He decided that the jury awarded too much money. The judge gutted the jury’s $242,000.00 verdict and decided that the two blind students should only receive $1,650.00 instead.
In other words, the judge decided to reduce the the verdict by 99%. 99% of what the jury thought was fair.
And despite the jury’s findings that the community college’s actions constituted 14 violations of the ADA, and other strong evidence, the judge issued a weak order that will not make sure the problems are fixed and won’t happen again.
Now the case has been appealed by the blind students and their lawyers. The National Federation of the Blind and NFB California are supporting the students and are part of this case and the appeal. The appeal asks the court to reinstate the original jury verdict for $240,000.00. It also asks the appeals court to improve the injunction so it is strong enough to make sure blind students are not discriminated against by the community college district in the future.
Why did the Judge gut the verdict?
After I posted this update on LinkedIn, a few readers asked a good question: Why did the judge take such a radical un-doing of the jury’s verdict? Here’s the scoop on that:
The judge reduced the verdict because of a 2022 US Supreme Court case that eliminated the ability of people who experience intentional disability discrimination to obtain emotional distress damages from public and private entities (like the community college district in this case) that receive federal financial assistance from the Federal Government under Section 504 of the Rehab Act or Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. But as the plaintiffs and disability organizations explain in their briefs linked below, the judge’s reasoning was wrong.
First, the community college district should have raised the issue much earlier. Second, the Supreme Court case (called Cummings) was not about the Americans with Disabilities Act and does not apply to the ADA.
And third, the damages in the blind students’ case are best seen as compensation for loss of educational opportunity related to the denial of educational benefit from inaccessible classes, the damage to grades from lack of accommodations, and delayed degrees and careers. These types of damages are not affected by the Cummings Supreme Court case even if the case applied to the ADA.
Resources about this appeal
Here are some resources to learn about the current status of the case.
- opening brief on appeal on behalf of blind students. Jessica Weber, of Brown Goldstein & Levy is the lead lawyer on the case.
- friend of the court (amicus) brief filed by 17 disability rights organizations in support of the blind students. The brief was authored by Amy Robertson of Fox and Robertson, Claudia Center and Michelle Uzeta of DREDF, and Andrew Rozynski of Eisenberg & Baum.
- November 9, 2024 article explaining the appeal written by Amy Robertson, one of the lead lawyers who wrote the amicus brief.
- National Council on Disability press release about the harms to disability rights caused by the Supreme Court Cummings decision.
Lainey is grateful for the lawyers who have been working on this case for more than seven years, and for the lawyers who worked on the amicus brief. These are some of the many disability civil rights lawyers who I know will work tirelessly to protect disability rights in the new administration. Their work will be needed more than ever.