Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued its first decision in an argued case this term: Acheson Hotels v. Laufer. In an opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the justices concluded that the case had become moot due to the plaintiff's decision to voluntarily dismiss her suits. Accordingly, the Court vacated the judgment below and remanded the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case as moot. The Court was unanimous, but Justices Thomas and Jackson each wrote separately concurring in the judgment.
Acheson Hotels had the potential to be a significant standing case. Here's how Justice Barrett described the case at the outset of her opinion.
Deborah Laufer has sued hundreds of hotels whose websites failed to state whether they have rooms accessible to the disabled. As the sheer number of lawsuits suggests, she does not focus her efforts on hotels where she has any thought of staying, much less booking a room. Instead, Laufer systematically searches the web to find hotels that fail to provide accessibility information and sues to force compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 104 Stat. 327, 42 U. S. C. §12101 et seq. Ordinarily, the hotels settle her claims and pay her attorney's fees. But some have resisted, arguing that Laufer is not injured by the absence of information about rooms she has no plans to reserve. Only plaintiffs who allege a concrete injury have standing to sue in federal court. Laufer, these hotels have argued, is suing to enforce the law rather than to remedy her own harms.
