CU CEO Speaks Out On ADA Case Dismissal
“I said, ‘I want to fight it, and if we lose and we lose money, then you can put it on me.’"
In an interview with CU Times, Roanoke Valley Community Credit Union CEO Woody Windley said he’s pleased with the decision.
“We’re glad and relieved that it’s over,” he said.
“I’m glad we didn’t settle; it was worth the effort and saved us money in the end,” he added.
The credit union, which has $80 million in assets and about 10,000 members, was sued back in October 2017 by a plaintiff who has sued several other credit unions over similar issues.
In Roanoke Valley Community’s suit, the plaintiff claimed the credit union’s website lacked text that allowed screen readers to verbally describe the site’s graphics, contained redundant links that created navigation problems for blind users and had empty or missing form labels, which made the site more cumbersome for blind users.
Most of the credit unions affected by similar ADA lawsuits that CU Times has been tracking for nearly a year have since settled their cases. The idea of settling naturally crossed Windley’s mind, too.
“I knew at least a couple of credit unions around here that I’m pretty sure settled with these guys because they didn’t want to deal with it,” he noted.
“We didn’t want to have a perception that we were insensitive to members with disabilities. That was probably the big thing,” he added.
But there was another issue on Windley’s mind as well — the massive number of suits filed by the same law firm against other credit unions.
“I just felt like it was wrong,” he said.
“If you let them win, then they come back next week with something else,” Windley added.
Windley said he worked with CUNA, NAFCU and New Hampshire-based consulting firm CUSAG to understand all of the credit union’s options. And he went to his board and told them he wanted to fight.
“I laid it all out, and I said, ‘Here’s the risk,’” he explained. “I said, ‘I want to fight it, and if we lose and we lose money, then you can put it on me.’ But we had a really good year last year, and we’re very fortunate that our credit union is doing very well, so where some credit unions can’t afford to fight it, we could. We could have fought it and lost and been okay. So I feel like we’re doing it for the other credit unions that can’t.”
Windley said the court’s decision to throw out the case against his credit union has emboldened him, and he hopes it will embolden other credit unions, too.
“I think we’ll probably be more willing to challenge anything that we feel like is detrimental to credit unions as a whole. And especially for our credit union here,” he added.
Windley said it’s another thing he’s got to keep a close eye on.
“A credit union our size — you’ve pretty much got to keep your hand on the wheel, because it changes day to day,” he said. “But that’s the fun part of it.”