On March 13th credit union concerns about frivolous lawsuit demand letters on ADA website access were addressed when CUNA participated in a joint trade meeting with Assistant Attorney General (AAG) Eric Dreiband, head of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division, and Rebecca Bond, Chief of the Disability Rights Section, to discuss the need for formal ADA website accessibility standards. This meeting included several trades from other industries, including restaurants, retail businesses, and banks.
During the discussion, the group informed AAG Dreiband and other senior DOJ attorneys about the wave of ADA litigation related to websites and urged the DOJ to act on creating an official standard for website accessibility under the ADA. This effort to keep the ADA issue at the forefront to drive towards a solution is just one more step in a line of effort by the credit union industry that includes:
- Industry amicus briefs in defense of credit unions hit with these lawsuits, most recently in Michigan. CUNA also saw a victory in January with the dismissal of an appellate-level ADA case against a credit union;
- CUNA has met on several occasions with previous Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his staff, including a roundtable in December, and following up with detailed letters describing the issue and potential solutions;
- Coordination of a letter to Sessions from 19 state attorneys general including AG Chris Carr for Georgia expressing the need for a solution, and
- Engaging with both chambers of Congress, resulting in letters to Sessions from 103 members of Congress, and another from six senators (including several from Georgia), and calling for clarity in the recent government funding bill.
