Georgia Judge Adds to Pile of Dismissed ADA Cases Against CUs
A judge finds the plaintiff in a case against Savannah FCU was not injured by their inability to research the CU.
A Georgia District Court judge is the latest to throw out one of the lawsuits that have been lobbed at dozens of credit unions across the country in the past year regarding their websites’ alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
According to court documents, on July 10, a U.S. District Court judge for the southern district of Georgia dismissed a case against Savannah, Ga.-based Savannah Federal Credit Union, which has $20 million in assets and about 1,700 members, finding that the plaintiff didn’t adequately allege he was eligible to join the credit union and was not injured by the inability to research information about its services and locations.
Multiple plaintiffs, most of whom are represented by the same law firm, have filed over 100 cases in federal court against credit unions over the past year regarding alleged violations of the ADA, according to an analysis by CU Times. Most appear to have settled, but some credit unions have chosen to fight their cases instead. To date, judges in at least five district courts in four states have so far thrown out at least nine lawsuits.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit against Savannah FCU, which was originally filed on November 20, 2017, made many of the same claims found in those 100+ other lawsuits: that the credit union’s website allegedly lacked text that allowed screen readers to describe the sites’ graphics verbally, contained redundant links that created navigation problems for blind users and had empty or missing form labels, which made the sites more cumbersome for blind users.
In the southern district of Georgia, however, the judge said the plaintiff didn’t adequately explain how or why he was eligible to join the credit union, and the inability to research information about the credit unions’ services and locations did not amount to injury.
“Plaintiff has made no allegation that there was a service he intended to use, but was unable to use as a result of the barriers on defendant’s website. Also, plaintiff [has] not made any specific allegation of an attempt or need to visit defendant’s location,” the order explained.
“Not only has plaintiff failed to allege an actual injury in this case, plaintiff’s complaint also fails because he has not alleged that he will suffer any actual ongoing or future harm,” the judge added.
Similar to other recent orders dismissing ADA cases against credit unions, the judge in the Savannah FCU case shied away from declaring whether websites were subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act — a matter that the credit union industry has been pressuring lawmakers to address.