For several years I have tried to convince judges in the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.) that websites were not “places of public accommodation” subject to lawsuits under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 42 U.S.C.A. §12181, et. seq.
This position is not a stretch by any means given that the statute, on its face, limits its application to “places,” which are inherently physical. Yet time and again courts either avoided the issue, or held that ‘place’ should be interpreted generously enough to encompass businesses having a purely digital presence. This expansive view of the ADA—found nowhere in the text of the statute—took on a life of its own, being repeated so often and so mechanically as to become an assumed part of the law itself.