The spate of ADA lawsuits against credit unions spread from Virginia to Georgia this week, where at least two more credit unions have been sued over the accessibility of their websites, according to court documents.
Those filings show that Hapeville, Georgia-based Family First Credit Union and Atlanta-based Fort McPherson Credit Union were both hit with lawsuits filed in District Court on November 15. Family First Credit Union has $98 million in assets and about 12,600 members; Fort McPherson Credit Union has $23 million in assets and about 4,500 members.
Both suits have the same plaintiff, though it’s not the same person suing nearly two dozen credit unions in Virginia. According to the complaints, however, the Georgia and Virginia plaintiffs do have the same California-based attorneys.
Similar to the Virginia cases, the two lawsuits in Georgia allege that the Family First and Fort McPherson websites violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. That law prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability for equal enjoyment of goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations in public places.
That alleged discrimination includes, among other things, failing to embed code that allows screen readers to vocalize descriptions of graphics on credit union websites, having redundant links and empty or missing form labels, according to the complaints. Due to these things, visually impaired users can’t look for locations or learn about the credit unions’ services, privileges, advantages and amenities, they alleged.
“Family First Credit Union’s website is in compliance with the laws, the credit union denies any wrongdoing, and this is a frivolous lawsuit that the credit union plans to vehemently defend against through its retained counsel,” a spokesperson told CU Times. Fort McPherson Credit Union did not respond to a request for comment.
Motion to dismiss
Earlier this month, Chesapeake, Virginia-based ABNB Federal Credit Union filed a motion to dismiss a similar lawsuit against it and challenged the allegations made in the case. Much of that credit union’s beef revolves around whether websites are public places and what exactly the rules are for making them accessible.
In a memo to the court, the credit union argued, for example, that although the Department of Justice issued detailed guidelines on how to implement Title III of the ADA for brick-and-mortar facilities, it never issued regulations regarding what is required for internet facilities.
“On July 26, 2010 – over seven years ago – the DOJ published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to set standards for Internet accessibility for the visually-impaired. Those proposed regulations have been deferred and deferred again,” it wrote.
In lieu of regulations, conversations about site accessibility often revolve around standards developed by a group called the World Wide Web Consortium. One version of those standards, called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 AA, gets most of the attention, experts say. However, those standards are not law or regulation, the credit union said.
ABNB also argued that the ADA doesn’t deem websites places of public accommodation.
“The ADA contains an extended definition of this term, listing almost seventy ‘places’ of public accommodation, and each of these places – library, bakery, shoe repair shop – are ‘brick-and-mortar’ establishments, i.e.,‘places’ in the normal and ordinary reading of the term,” it said.
ABNB also questioned whether the plaintiff in its case is part of the field of membership that would make him eligible to join.
“There is no allegation that would suggest he can, and his scattershot approach of suing credit unions throughout the Commonwealth — each of which is subject to the same type of ‘membership field’ restriction, albeit with very different requirements — strongly suggests he cannot,” ABNB said.
ABNB Federal Credit Union has $557 million in assets and has about 57,000 members.
In Virginia, at least five cases have been dismissed to date.
More to come?
ABNB’s memo to the court also suggested that cases filed against credit unions in recent weeks may be just the tip of the iceberg. According to the document, “scores if not hundreds” of demand letters have been sent to other credit unions in Virginia and Maryland, and the letters threaten to sue within two weeks if a confidential resolution is not achieved.
The filing highlighted another important consideration for credit unions worried about ADA suits.
“ABNB plainly admits for the purpose of this motion that its brick-and-mortar facilities are public accommodations and must be — and are — accessible to the visually disabled. But there is nothing that requires any individual to do business with ABNB only over its website, and there is no advantage to so doing. There might be cases where credit unions give higher rates of return on membership accounts opened over the internet, or charge less interest on loans originating in cyberspace. In those instances, we would have a different debate,” it said.[TO12]
