Legal News

Ninth Circuit Gives Disabled NASCAR Fans Unimpeded View of Track

By Dan Slater

The Law Blog has been to Dawsonville, Georgia, the birthplace of NASCAR. Heck, we even passed by the home of Bill Elliott (”Awesome Bill from Dawsonville“) while we were there. But we’ve yet to attend a NASCAR race.

Pole-sitter Kurt Busch leads Bill Elliott during practice for the NASCAR Sharp Aquos 500 auto race, Sept. 1, 2007, in Fontana, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

We hope we make it to a race someday, but even if we don’t, we’re pleased about a recent Ninth Circuit ruling that means Robert Miller, and other disabled NASCAR fans, are entitled to an unimpeded view of the racetrack. Here’s the NLJ story, and here’s the Ninth Circuit’s opinion by Judge Jay Bybee.

When Miller, a quadriplegic, purchased NASCAR tickets for races at the California Speedway, he always sat in one of the speedway’s two areas for wheelchairs, though he still had problems seeing the best parts of the races when fans in front of him sprung to their feet. The court said that the California Speedway Corp. had violated Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and a DOJ interpretive rule requiring that wheelchair areas at auto racing and other public venues provide “lines of sight comparable to those for members of the general public.”

The Ninth Circuit overturned a federal district court, which had granted summary judgment to the speedway, and, notes NLJ, added to a circuit split over the following issue: Do the ADA rules merely require a line of sight for disabled fans when the spectators were in their seats or did they go further—requiring a line of sight for the disabled when the rest of the fans were standing?

However, the issue may not make it to the High Court. The DOJ has issued proposed new regulations, its ADA Standards for Accessible Design, which would, if approved by the Bush administration, codify the requirement of disabled seating with lines of sight above standing fans—in regulations promulgated after a rulemaking proceeding.

Not everyone’s happy. Turner Madden, a partner in Washington’s Madden & Patton who represents a trade association for stadiums, arenas and convention centers, noted legal and practical problems in the DOJ rule. In addition to the line-of-sight requirement, Madden said, current ADA regulations require that 1% of all seating be designated for the disabled. “In a 70,000-seat stadium, that’s 700 seats put aside for wheelchairs,” Madden said. “That’s a lot of seats that just aren’t being used. DOJ just pulled that number out of the air.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 15, 2008 (boomark / email).