The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied review in a disabilities rights case that could have had an impact on whether internet services and companies need to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The case, titled Magee v. Coca-Cola Refreshments USA, was brought by Emmett Magee, a blind man from Louisiana who invoked the ADA in suing Coca Cola because its glass-front vending machines made it impossible for him to know what product he was choosing and at what price. He was thwarted buying soda from vending machines at a hospital and a bus station.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit turned away his claim, ruling that vending machines are “not a physical place open to public access” and therefore don't fit the definition of “public accommodations” that are required to abide by the ADA. It also said that the hospital and the bus stations were public accommodations and “may very well” bear some responsibility to make vending machines on their premises accessible to the disabled.

Lawyers for Magee asserted that three other circuits—the First, Second and Seventh— have not limited the definition of public accommodation to actual physical structures that people enter. The Fifth Circuit's narrow interpretation, Magee's petition states, undermines the ADA's broad purpose to end discrimination and would, as an example, cover a brick-and-mortar Best Buy store, but not an automated Best Buy kiosk that offers the same goods. University of Virginia School of Law professor Toby Heytens, a director of the school's Supreme Court litigation clinic, is counsel of record on the Magee brief.

Coca Cola, represented by Charles Morgan of Alston & Bird, countered in a brief that there is no circuit split and that the Fifth Circuit was correct in deciding that vending machines are not public accommodations under the ADA.

In February, the high court asked the U.S. solicitor general to weigh in on the case—an early signal of the court's interest in granting cert in a case. Then-acting solicitor general Jeffrey Wall submitted a brief in July that agreed with the Fifth Circuit's conclusion.

The government brief also stated that a “sales or rental establishment”—a type of public accommodation listed in the ADA—is “not categorically limited to businesses that are staffed by human proprietors or employees.”

That, the brief said, is because Congress intended “sales or retail establishment” to be a catch-all provision that would help in applying the ADA to new situations and technologies. It went on to cite Amazon's new grocery store in Seattle that operates without human checkers.

“Absolutely huge” is how ADA expert William Goren described that part of the government's brief. “If my read is correct, the DOJ view is a very pro-disability approach to take,” Goren wrote in his Understanding the ADA blog. The government's interpretation, according to Goren, could resonate in future cases that seek to require Internet-based businesses to comply with the ADA.