Americans With Disabilities ActAmericans With Disabilities Act
Disability Groups Claim California's Assisted Suicide Law Discriminates Against Them
He's Filed Over 2,000 Disability Lawsuits in California. His Latest May Mean More Cases Nationwide
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"content": "\u003cp>A group of people with disabilities is suing to upend California’s assisted suicide law, saying the bias they faced trying to get health care during the pandemic shows the system is too quick to offer death as an appropriate outcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://endassistedsuicide.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Complaint_Accessible.pdf\">lawsuit, filed against state officials and agencies (PDF)\u003c/a>, argues that California’s 7-year-old law that allows terminally ill people to choose to get lethal drugs to end their life — the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/chsi/pages/end-of-life-option-act-.aspx#:~:text=The%20End%20of%20Life%20Option,of%20Public%20Health%20(CDPH).\">End of Life Option Act\u003c/a> — puts disabled people at greater risk of being coerced into seeking assisted suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit says people with disabilities often face a denial of the medical care they need and, as a result, may be quick to seek assisted suicide as an option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ingrid Tischer, who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, says she experienced that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tischer, who lives with a form of muscular dystrophy, has been around doctors her entire life. In 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, Tischer was hospitalized for pneumonia. When she asked for therapy to regain her strength, the doctor said she didn’t qualify.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He kind of looked at me and said, ‘Well, I mean, look at you, there’s nothing we can do for you. And you’ve known this is coming for a long time. So why are you surprised?'” Tischer says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tischer, who was 55 then, says she was devastated. She thought she was facing the end of her life. “For me, it was a very solid gut punch,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If a doctor had told her she should apply for California’s assisted suicide law, she says she might well have said yes.[pullquote align=\"right\" size=\"medium\" citation=\"Michael Bien, constitutional and civil rights attorney\"]‘Is it really a choice when society makes it very difficult to access home health care support?’[/pullquote]No doctor ever suggested that to Tischer. The lawsuit doesn’t mention any cases of that kind of coercion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tischer, instead, got another doctor, who gave her a different diagnosis. She left the hospital and recovered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tischer and the other plaintiffs raise fears of a subtle kind of discrimination — what Michael Bien, the lawyer who filed the challenge, calls “steering.” Bien says people who have difficulty getting the care they need may feel compelled, instead, to see assisted suicide as their best option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The End of Life Option Act requires people to make a clear choice to end their lives. But, Bien argues, the choice of people with disabilities gets clouded by whether they get the medical care and support that helps them live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Is it really a choice,” Bien asks, “when society makes it very difficult to access home health care support?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many people in California with disabilities, there are long waits — often months long — to get a direct support professional to provide the in-home support that allows them to live independently. California is known to have a generous program. But a \u003ca href=\"https://www.auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2020-109.pdf\">report by the state auditor (PDF)\u003c/a> in 2021 found that even when people get into the In-Home Supportive Services Program, some 40,000 a month don’t get all the care they require. For someone with quadriplegia, getting an attendant to help them get in and out of bed may determine whether they can go to school or work, and stay out of a nursing home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lonnie VanHook, another individual plaintiff in the lawsuit, has quadriplegia and needs round-the-clock assistance, including people who can move him in his bed or wheelchair to prevent him from getting painful bedsores. But when he couldn’t get enough hours of care, he became depressed and considered assisted suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jules Steimnitz, a rehabilitation doctor, calls this “attendant deficiency diagnosis, that you can’t get attendants.” Steimnitz, who first treated VanHook more than three decades ago, kept in touch and helped talk him through that desperation. “This is his main problem. This is what’s causing his depression. He doesn’t need suicide. He needs attendants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Over the years, it has been a continuous uphill battle” to get that assistance, VanHook told NPR. “It’s a mental drain. It’s debilitating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit says VanHook, as a Black man with little income, is at an increased risk because of racial disparities in health care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The limits of health care systems became more clear early in the pandemic. When health care providers feared possible shortages of ventilators and other treatments, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8957387/\">states issued guidelines\u003c/a> — called “crisis standards of care” — that sometimes gave doctors and hospitals permission to put disabled and elderly people at the back of the line if care got scarce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stepped in and stopped it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among several states that agreed to rewrite their triage guidelines: \u003ca href=\"https://public3.pagefreezer.com/content/HHS.gov/31-12-2020T08:51/https:/www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/06/26/ocr-resolves-complaint-tennessee-after-it-revises-its-triage-plans-protect-against-disability.html\">Tennessee\u003c/a> revised rules that let care be denied to people who already use a ventilator, those with advanced neuromuscular conditions like ALS, and some people with dementia and traumatic brain injuries. Officials in \u003ca href=\"https://public3.pagefreezer.com/content/HHS.gov/31-12-2020T08:51/https:/www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/04/16/ocr-resolves-civil-rights-complaint-against-pennsylvania-after-it-revises-its-pandemic-health-care.html\">Pennsylvania\u003c/a> changed standards that told hospitals it was OK to cut off care to some people with chronic lung disease or cancer. \u003ca href=\"https://public3.pagefreezer.com/content/HHS.gov/31-12-2020T08:51/https:/www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/04/08/ocr-reaches-early-case-resolution-alabama-after-it-removes-discriminatory-ventilator-triaging.html\">Alabama\u003c/a> rewrote rules that allowed the denial of ventilators to people with “moderate to severe dementia.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who work with California’s assisted suicide law acknowledge that disabled people often struggle to get adequate medical care, but they say the state’s end-of-life law is set up to avoid precisely that kind of discrimination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Having a disability would not qualify someone for aid-in-dying,” says Nathan Fairman, a psychiatrist and palliative care doctor who oversees cases at UC Davis Health in Sacramento. “Someone who’s disabled and has end-stage cancer would potentially qualify. And they would have to step through all of the safeguards that are set out in the law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two doctors, he notes, need to confirm that someone is terminally ill and mentally competent to choose to die. Health care systems like his, Fairman says, add psychological and other evaluations that go beyond the state law to further protect against abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Oregon went first and other states followed\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit was filed by four disability rights groups — United Spinal Association, which advocates for veterans and others with spinal cord injuries; Not Dead Yet and the Institute for Patients’ Rights, two groups that oppose assisted suicide laws; and CALIF, a Los Angeles nonprofit run by people with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health, the agency that keeps the statistics on who uses the assisted suicide law, said it “does not comment on litigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oregon was the first state to implement a right-to-die law, in 1997. Washington state was next, in 2009. Since then, such laws have spread quickly. Now, 10 states and the District of Columbia allow assisted suicide for terminally ill people who are competent to make that choice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, between 2016, when the law took effect, and the end of 2021, 3,766 people got prescriptions for the medications and 64.3% of them are known to have taken those pills, according to the most recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CHSI/CDPH%20Document%20Library/CDPH_End_of_Life%20_Option_Act_Report_2021_FINAL.pdf\">annual report (PDF)\u003c/a> by the California Department of Public Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, argues that the state’s assisted suicide law violates due process protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and violates the anti-discrimination provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Some want to use the law to end their lives — but can’t\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>But that’s not the only challenge to the law under the ADA. Dr. Lonny Shavelson, a proponent of assisted suicide laws, recently sued California on behalf of \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-12-17/death-with-dignity-right-to-die-laws-leave-patients-with-impossible-choice\">disabled people who want to use the law to end their lives but can’t\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The End of Life Option Act says that a person who gets lethal medications must be able to take those pills themselves. That’s a common safeguard in assisted suicide laws, to prevent coercion by family members or others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Shavelson, a co-founder of the American Clinicians Academy on Medical Aid in Dying, says it ends up discriminating against some of the people who most clearly want to use the law — but can’t take the pills themselves because of the progression of their disease, such as people with ALS and Parkinson’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are denied “the same access to the law that able-bodied people receive because they’re unable to self-administer the medications, ” he says. “We’ve denied them assistance to a legal medical procedure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shavelson’s lawsuit was rejected by one U.S. District Court in California and is now on appeal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Ingrid Tischer is working again, helping nonprofits do fundraising. She looks back at the time two years ago when she was hospitalized, having difficulty breathing and ready to give up. She says she was driven then by fear — of dying or moving to a nursing home and of a “mass of misplaced guilt” that she’d become a burden to her husband. “I just wanted out,” she says. “I don’t think I was thinking very clearly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Tischer had resources that turned her around — that supportive spouse, a solid family income, a house, reliable health insurance and her long personal experience navigating the medical system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are many people in this world who are a lot more vulnerable than I,” she says, and — as a result — more likely, she believes, to seek assisted suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A group of people with disabilities is suing to upend California’s assisted suicide law, saying the bias they faced trying to get health care during the pandemic shows the system is too quick to offer death as an appropriate outcome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://endassistedsuicide.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Complaint_Accessible.pdf\">lawsuit, filed against state officials and agencies (PDF)\u003c/a>, argues that California’s 7-year-old law that allows terminally ill people to choose to get lethal drugs to end their life — the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/chsi/pages/end-of-life-option-act-.aspx#:~:text=The%20End%20of%20Life%20Option,of%20Public%20Health%20(CDPH).\">End of Life Option Act\u003c/a> — puts disabled people at greater risk of being coerced into seeking assisted suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit says people with disabilities often face a denial of the medical care they need and, as a result, may be quick to seek assisted suicide as an option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ingrid Tischer, who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, says she experienced that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tischer, who lives with a form of muscular dystrophy, has been around doctors her entire life. In 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, Tischer was hospitalized for pneumonia. When she asked for therapy to regain her strength, the doctor said she didn’t qualify.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He kind of looked at me and said, ‘Well, I mean, look at you, there’s nothing we can do for you. And you’ve known this is coming for a long time. So why are you surprised?'” Tischer says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tischer, who was 55 then, says she was devastated. She thought she was facing the end of her life. “For me, it was a very solid gut punch,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If a doctor had told her she should apply for California’s assisted suicide law, she says she might well have said yes.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>No doctor ever suggested that to Tischer. The lawsuit doesn’t mention any cases of that kind of coercion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tischer, instead, got another doctor, who gave her a different diagnosis. She left the hospital and recovered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tischer and the other plaintiffs raise fears of a subtle kind of discrimination — what Michael Bien, the lawyer who filed the challenge, calls “steering.” Bien says people who have difficulty getting the care they need may feel compelled, instead, to see assisted suicide as their best option.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The End of Life Option Act requires people to make a clear choice to end their lives. But, Bien argues, the choice of people with disabilities gets clouded by whether they get the medical care and support that helps them live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Is it really a choice,” Bien asks, “when society makes it very difficult to access home health care support?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many people in California with disabilities, there are long waits — often months long — to get a direct support professional to provide the in-home support that allows them to live independently. California is known to have a generous program. But a \u003ca href=\"https://www.auditor.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2020-109.pdf\">report by the state auditor (PDF)\u003c/a> in 2021 found that even when people get into the In-Home Supportive Services Program, some 40,000 a month don’t get all the care they require. For someone with quadriplegia, getting an attendant to help them get in and out of bed may determine whether they can go to school or work, and stay out of a nursing home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lonnie VanHook, another individual plaintiff in the lawsuit, has quadriplegia and needs round-the-clock assistance, including people who can move him in his bed or wheelchair to prevent him from getting painful bedsores. But when he couldn’t get enough hours of care, he became depressed and considered assisted suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jules Steimnitz, a rehabilitation doctor, calls this “attendant deficiency diagnosis, that you can’t get attendants.” Steimnitz, who first treated VanHook more than three decades ago, kept in touch and helped talk him through that desperation. “This is his main problem. This is what’s causing his depression. He doesn’t need suicide. He needs attendants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Over the years, it has been a continuous uphill battle” to get that assistance, VanHook told NPR. “It’s a mental drain. It’s debilitating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit says VanHook, as a Black man with little income, is at an increased risk because of racial disparities in health care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The limits of health care systems became more clear early in the pandemic. When health care providers feared possible shortages of ventilators and other treatments, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8957387/\">states issued guidelines\u003c/a> — called “crisis standards of care” — that sometimes gave doctors and hospitals permission to put disabled and elderly people at the back of the line if care got scarce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stepped in and stopped it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among several states that agreed to rewrite their triage guidelines: \u003ca href=\"https://public3.pagefreezer.com/content/HHS.gov/31-12-2020T08:51/https:/www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/06/26/ocr-resolves-complaint-tennessee-after-it-revises-its-triage-plans-protect-against-disability.html\">Tennessee\u003c/a> revised rules that let care be denied to people who already use a ventilator, those with advanced neuromuscular conditions like ALS, and some people with dementia and traumatic brain injuries. Officials in \u003ca href=\"https://public3.pagefreezer.com/content/HHS.gov/31-12-2020T08:51/https:/www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/04/16/ocr-resolves-civil-rights-complaint-against-pennsylvania-after-it-revises-its-pandemic-health-care.html\">Pennsylvania\u003c/a> changed standards that told hospitals it was OK to cut off care to some people with chronic lung disease or cancer. \u003ca href=\"https://public3.pagefreezer.com/content/HHS.gov/31-12-2020T08:51/https:/www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/04/08/ocr-reaches-early-case-resolution-alabama-after-it-removes-discriminatory-ventilator-triaging.html\">Alabama\u003c/a> rewrote rules that allowed the denial of ventilators to people with “moderate to severe dementia.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who work with California’s assisted suicide law acknowledge that disabled people often struggle to get adequate medical care, but they say the state’s end-of-life law is set up to avoid precisely that kind of discrimination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Having a disability would not qualify someone for aid-in-dying,” says Nathan Fairman, a psychiatrist and palliative care doctor who oversees cases at UC Davis Health in Sacramento. “Someone who’s disabled and has end-stage cancer would potentially qualify. And they would have to step through all of the safeguards that are set out in the law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two doctors, he notes, need to confirm that someone is terminally ill and mentally competent to choose to die. Health care systems like his, Fairman says, add psychological and other evaluations that go beyond the state law to further protect against abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Oregon went first and other states followed\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit was filed by four disability rights groups — United Spinal Association, which advocates for veterans and others with spinal cord injuries; Not Dead Yet and the Institute for Patients’ Rights, two groups that oppose assisted suicide laws; and CALIF, a Los Angeles nonprofit run by people with disabilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health, the agency that keeps the statistics on who uses the assisted suicide law, said it “does not comment on litigation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oregon was the first state to implement a right-to-die law, in 1997. Washington state was next, in 2009. Since then, such laws have spread quickly. Now, 10 states and the District of Columbia allow assisted suicide for terminally ill people who are competent to make that choice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, between 2016, when the law took effect, and the end of 2021, 3,766 people got prescriptions for the medications and 64.3% of them are known to have taken those pills, according to the most recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CHSI/CDPH%20Document%20Library/CDPH_End_of_Life%20_Option_Act_Report_2021_FINAL.pdf\">annual report (PDF)\u003c/a> by the California Department of Public Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, argues that the state’s assisted suicide law violates due process protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and violates the anti-discrimination provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Some want to use the law to end their lives — but can’t\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>But that’s not the only challenge to the law under the ADA. Dr. Lonny Shavelson, a proponent of assisted suicide laws, recently sued California on behalf of \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-12-17/death-with-dignity-right-to-die-laws-leave-patients-with-impossible-choice\">disabled people who want to use the law to end their lives but can’t\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The End of Life Option Act says that a person who gets lethal medications must be able to take those pills themselves. That’s a common safeguard in assisted suicide laws, to prevent coercion by family members or others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Shavelson, a co-founder of the American Clinicians Academy on Medical Aid in Dying, says it ends up discriminating against some of the people who most clearly want to use the law — but can’t take the pills themselves because of the progression of their disease, such as people with ALS and Parkinson’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They are denied “the same access to the law that able-bodied people receive because they’re unable to self-administer the medications, ” he says. “We’ve denied them assistance to a legal medical procedure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shavelson’s lawsuit was rejected by one U.S. District Court in California and is now on appeal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, Ingrid Tischer is working again, helping nonprofits do fundraising. She looks back at the time two years ago when she was hospitalized, having difficulty breathing and ready to give up. She says she was driven then by fear — of dying or moving to a nursing home and of a “mass of misplaced guilt” that she’d become a burden to her husband. “I just wanted out,” she says. “I don’t think I was thinking very clearly.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Tischer had resources that turned her around — that supportive spouse, a solid family income, a house, reliable health insurance and her long personal experience navigating the medical system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are many people in this world who are a lot more vulnerable than I,” she says, and — as a result — more likely, she believes, to seek assisted suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>It all started with a parking spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a breezy afternoon in September 2017, Chris Langer couldn’t find one that would accommodate his van and the ramp he uses for his wheelchair behind a San Diego lobster shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What transpired next has been the subject of arguments before two federal courts and opened a wide door to more federal disability lawsuits in California, home to more of these lawsuits in the last litigious decade than any other state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four months after that fall day, Langer filed a disability access lawsuit in federal court against the lobster shop, a smoke shop in the same building and the building’s owners, Milan and Diana Kiser, claiming a violation of his rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Langer has filed more than 2,000 claims like those over the past decade or so. For the last two years, his case against the Kisers was headed to defeat, with a federal judge ruling against him and questioning his motivation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But last month, Langer prevailed before a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Attorneys who argue federal disability cases say that victory, which itself is being appealed, could open the floodgates to more federal disability rights lawsuits after a brief slowdown last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Langer wins the next round, attorneys who represent businesses sued in disability cases worry that the case would set a precedent for a broader claim of “standing” to sue among plaintiffs in California disabled access lawsuits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Typically, these cases are settled — out of tens of thousands of federal disability rights lawsuits filed nationally, only a couple dozen have ever gone to trial, according to a review of federal appellate court decisions by Texas attorney Richard Hunt, who defends businesses sued for disability rights claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In most other states, any awards won in federal disability rights cases can only be used to pay legal fees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Dennis Price, attorney for Chris Langer\"]‘What my clients are doing is basic code enforcement, and that’s what California law specifically encourages.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California law allows for extra compensation that can benefit plaintiffs in those cases. The \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CIV§ionNum=51\">Unruh Civil Rights Act\u003c/a> provides an additional award to plaintiffs themselves, which begins at a minimum of $4,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s a major reason why California has had \u003ca href=\"https://www.adatitleiii.com/2023/02/ada-title-iii-federal-lawsuits-numbers-are-down-but-likely-to-rebound-in-2023/\">more than 30,000 federal disability rights lawsuits\u003c/a> in the last decade, far outpacing the rest of the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Langer declined to be interviewed, according to his attorney, who said people like Langer are forcing businesses to comply with a law they should already be following.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no three-letter agency that’s going around and enforcing these laws,” said Langer’s attorney, Dennis Price. “What my clients are doing is basic code enforcement, and that’s what California law specifically encourages.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Americans with Disabilities Act is one of a few federal laws that operate by turning their enforcement over to the people, with \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/crt/disability-rights-cases\">occasional interventions\u003c/a> by the U.S. Department of Justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the courts, the academics who study this issue and the lawyers who argue the cases, there are three interpretations of the actions of Langer, who has acknowledged in court proceedings that he is a “serial litigator.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one, serial litigants are warriors for disability access, literally opening doors for other people by identifying obstacles and suing to fix them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the second, they are simply pawns of avaricious law firms who have created a cottage industry out of disability rights lawsuits. According to filings in a tax case, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article269332397.html\">one serial litigant\u003c/a> in Sacramento accumulated more than $1 million in settlements in 2014 alone. The firm representing him kept more than half the money and he kept the rest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez\"]‘On the day he filed this lawsuit, he also filed six other lawsuits. Yet, [Langer] was unfamiliar with those suits as well as the businesses involved.’[/pullquote]The third perspective, and one evidently held by the original judge deciding Langer’s case, is the least generous, handed down when Langer attempted to exclude his history as a serial litigator from trial. Several times in his April 5, 2021, opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Benitez questioned Langer’s credibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The court finds it doubtful that [Langer] would frequently travel to the property to purchase lobster, as he testified,” Benitez wrote. “This is bolstered by the fact [Langer] has filed previous lawsuits in which he admits he never intended to return to the premises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“On the day he filed this lawsuit, he also filed six other lawsuits. Yet, [Langer] was unfamiliar with those suits as well as the businesses involved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942995\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11942995\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMattersIngest02-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A woman with short black hair and a baseball cap walks by a business with a blue accessibility sign displayed next to a ramp.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMattersIngest02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMattersIngest02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMattersIngest02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMattersIngest02.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An accessibility sign at the entrance of a business in Chinatown, San Francisco, on Feb. 18, 2023. \u003ccite>(Shelby Knowles/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Thousands of disability claims every year\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, but the volume of lawsuits picked up in 2013, according to Seyfarth Shaw, the law firm that \u003ca href=\"https://www.adatitleiii.com/2023/02/ada-title-iii-federal-lawsuits-numbers-are-down-but-likely-to-rebound-in-2023/\">tracks federal disability lawsuits\u003c/a>. Since then, 33,100 claims were filed in federal courts in California. New York had 15,427, and Florida had 14,296 in the last decade. The next seven states barely topped 1,000 cases combined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That initial ruling in the Langer case, coupled with high-profile moves by liberal district attorneys in San Francisco and Los Angeles against a firm known for representing serial filers, appeared to chill the number of disability claims filed against California businesses last year, according to data collected by Seyfarth Shaw. Last year, 2,519 cases were filed in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one of the most publicized California cases, an attorney who used a wheelchair \u003ca href=\"https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-exclusive-disabled-access-attorney-to-be-2012sep12-story.html\">filed 67 lawsuits against businesses\u003c/a> in 2005 in the tiny San Diego County mountain town of Julian, home of the Apple Days Festival, alleging that he could not access them. The attorney was later disbarred, in part because he pleaded no contest to filing federal disability lawsuits on behalf of a disabled client who had no idea the cases had been filed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But businesses in the town of Julian did indeed improve their disability access. In the words of a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-julian-working-toward-more-access-for-disabled-2007jun11-story.html\">\u003cem>North County Times\u003c/em> story from 2007\u003c/a>: “wider doors, lower counters, repaved parking lots, more disabled parking and signs, signs, signs.”[aside postID=news_11934545 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/12/Featured-photo-horizontal-Alice-Wong-1020x574.png']The question in many of these cases comes down to the legal concept of “standing,” which asks whether the plaintiffs have actually suffered a consequence because of their disability, and whether they ever intended to return to the place where they encountered a problem. Benitez ruled that Langer did have standing, but his rights weren’t violated, in part because the parking spot in question wasn’t supposed to be publicly accessible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On appeal — and this is the other big reason plaintiffs file so often in California — the standing claim was received much more warmly, as it has been in other disability cases filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “The attempted use of past litigation to prevent a litigant from pursuing a valid claim in federal court warrants our most careful scrutiny,” the court, known as one of the country’s most liberal federal appeals courts, had written in a 2008 opinion cited in the Langer appellate decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, Langer’s arguments won over two judges on a three-judge panel. They reversed the Benitez decision and found that the lobster shop’s penchant for letting customers park in the tenant space made it, effectively, a public lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A business cannot offer parking to customers without disabilities while not offering that same benefit to customers with disabilities,” the two judges wrote. “That discrimination goes to the heart of the ADA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kisers have asked for a rehearing before all nine appellate court judges.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A service for disabled Californians\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Serial filers are the targets of misdirected anger, said Evelyn Clark, a Washington, D.C., attorney who uses a wheelchair and authored \u003ca href=\"https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/walee26&div=22&id=&page=\">a much-cited paper\u003c/a> in law school on serial litigants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Something that’s really small for you that just looks like, oh, it’s just one little step, could be a total barrier for someone like me trying to get in,” Clark said. “But nobody’s going to be 100% compliant with every tiny regulation under the ADA. So I can understand the frustration of business owners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But I’ve heard people in California talk about how they go out in a wheelchair and it’s almost kind of a reverse discrimination, where people just assume you’re there to sue them,” Clark said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the defense’s side, there’s another perception: that these lawsuits find the poorest store owners least able to defend themselves in a country where they may not speak the language or understand the legal system, with offers to settle that just so happen to be a little cheaper than mounting a defense.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Business owners on edge\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Business owners with a direct interest in the Langer case are hoping the Kisers get a rehearing before the full appeals court. Late last month, they filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing against the decision by the three-judge panel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Make no mistake, these ADA lawsuits are not about promoting the ideals of the ADA,” they wrote, “but rather, they are about the illegitimate transfer of wealth from historically marginalized communities and into the pockets of ADA plaintiff’s lawyers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a federal disability lawsuit that led Moji Saniefar, one of the authors of that brief, from white-collar securities litigation to defending businesses from federal disability rights lawsuits. Like an action movie sequel, this time it was personal: A serial litigant sued Saniefar’s father’s restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reza Saniefar was the owner of Zlfred’s, a well-loved Fresno cafe that closed during the coronavirus pandemic. An Iranian immigrant who fled the revolution in 1979, Reza Saniefar operated a small, family business. Locals evidently miss his restaurant enough to \u003ca href=\"http://whatmomscooking.com/2021/09/27/zlfreds/\">post and share copycat recipes\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cafe was named Zlfred’s because its former name was shared with another restaurant, called Alfred’s. When the other Alfred’s sued, Saniefar said, the previous owner simply stuck a Z where the A was. Thus, Zlfred’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Saniefar family adopted the same defiant attitude when the restaurant was sued over disability access in 2014. Moji was their attorney. They won, and then went on the offensive, taking the law firm that represented the plaintiff to court, claiming they used fraud and deception to coerce small businesses into settling the cases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The firm \u003ca href=\"https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law-firms-settle-suit-accusing-them-of-civil-rico-conspiracy-to-collect-ada-settlements\">settled the case and shut down\u003c/a>, but it wasn’t the only firm that represents serial litigants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942993\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11942993\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01.jpg\" alt=\"A blue accessibility sign hangs in the window of a building's entrance next to a variety of colorful, stuffed animals on display.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01-1920x1281.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An accessibility sign hangs at the entrance of a Chinatown business in San Francisco on Feb. 18, 2023. A recent court ruling could set a new precedent in regards to ADA violations in California. Yet, some believe these complaints are targeting immigrant communities. \u003ccite>(Shelby Knowles/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A much larger one, called Potter Handy, was accused by the liberal district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties of “bombarding California’s small businesses with abusive boilerplate lawsuits,” and instructing serial litigants to pretend to have encountered barriers at a business they never visited. They further accused Potter Handy of having its clients file fake disability claims that led to settlements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Each year Potter Handy uses ADA/Unruh lawsuits to shake down hundreds or even thousands of small businesses to pay it cash settlements, regardless of whether the businesses actually violate the ADA,” wrote Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón and former San Francisco City and County District Attorney Chesa Boudin in an April 2022 state court filing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They said the lawsuits not only threaten small businesses, but also “unfairly taint the reputation of other innocent disabled consumers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Potter Handy, which also does business as the Center for Disability Access, did not return calls seeking comment. Neither did Gascón. Boudin and Gascón wrote in their complaint that Potter Handy was particularly active in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Multiple Chinatown businesses were sued for allegedly having inaccessible outdoor dining tables during the early months of 2021,” they wrote, but “those businesses were open for takeout only during that time and had no dining tables at all — indoor or outdoor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Potter Handy responded in court that Boudin and Gascón were making the accusations for political reasons. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/Da-s-Lawsuit-Against-Potter-Handy-Law-Firm-17408200.php\">dismissed the case\u003c/a>, and ruled that Potter Handy’s attorneys were covered by California’s “litigation privilege.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"h-a-client-who-wanted-to-fight\">A client who wanted to fight\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the Langer case, Moji Saniefar is representing a handful of Bay Area merchant associations, including the Chinatown Merchants United Association of San Francisco, who are panicked about the appellate court ruling in Langer’s favor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Serial ADA plaintiff’s lawyers recognize that the justice gap makes [small businesses] far more likely to settle cases quickly and without prolonged litigation,” according to the Feb. 16 friend-of-the-court brief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hunt, the Texas attorney who defends businesses in disability rights cases, said it’s unusual for his clients to take a case to court, much less all the way up to federal appeals court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to have a particularly angry, rich, stubborn client to not settle the case,” Hunt said. “I’m looking for angry, rich, stubborn clients. I would love to have some, but so far, when I tell my clients that they can get out of it by settling it for cheaper than the cost of defense, then they’re like, you know, let’s just settle it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attorney for the Kisers, whom Langer is suing, said the Legislature needs to step in. He agrees that his clients may fit Hunt’s description.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mr. Kiser’s perspective is, hey, we did nothing wrong and we don’t think we should have to pay this guy,” said Sam Henein, a San Diego lawyer. “He says if the judge tells me I did something wrong, I guess then I have to pay, but I don’t think I did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The solution, said Clark, the D.C. attorney, is to amend the ADA’s enforcement mechanism from its current iteration to a “notice and cure” standard, which would give businesses 60 or 90 days to fix the accessibility issue without money changing hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It all started with a parking spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a breezy afternoon in September 2017, Chris Langer couldn’t find one that would accommodate his van and the ramp he uses for his wheelchair behind a San Diego lobster shop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What transpired next has been the subject of arguments before two federal courts and opened a wide door to more federal disability lawsuits in California, home to more of these lawsuits in the last litigious decade than any other state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four months after that fall day, Langer filed a disability access lawsuit in federal court against the lobster shop, a smoke shop in the same building and the building’s owners, Milan and Diana Kiser, claiming a violation of his rights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Langer has filed more than 2,000 claims like those over the past decade or so. For the last two years, his case against the Kisers was headed to defeat, with a federal judge ruling against him and questioning his motivation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But last month, Langer prevailed before a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Attorneys who argue federal disability cases say that victory, which itself is being appealed, could open the floodgates to more federal disability rights lawsuits after a brief slowdown last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Langer wins the next round, attorneys who represent businesses sued in disability cases worry that the case would set a precedent for a broader claim of “standing” to sue among plaintiffs in California disabled access lawsuits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Typically, these cases are settled — out of tens of thousands of federal disability rights lawsuits filed nationally, only a couple dozen have ever gone to trial, according to a review of federal appellate court decisions by Texas attorney Richard Hunt, who defends businesses sued for disability rights claims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In most other states, any awards won in federal disability rights cases can only be used to pay legal fees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California law allows for extra compensation that can benefit plaintiffs in those cases. The \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CIV§ionNum=51\">Unruh Civil Rights Act\u003c/a> provides an additional award to plaintiffs themselves, which begins at a minimum of $4,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s a major reason why California has had \u003ca href=\"https://www.adatitleiii.com/2023/02/ada-title-iii-federal-lawsuits-numbers-are-down-but-likely-to-rebound-in-2023/\">more than 30,000 federal disability rights lawsuits\u003c/a> in the last decade, far outpacing the rest of the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Langer declined to be interviewed, according to his attorney, who said people like Langer are forcing businesses to comply with a law they should already be following.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no three-letter agency that’s going around and enforcing these laws,” said Langer’s attorney, Dennis Price. “What my clients are doing is basic code enforcement, and that’s what California law specifically encourages.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Americans with Disabilities Act is one of a few federal laws that operate by turning their enforcement over to the people, with \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/crt/disability-rights-cases\">occasional interventions\u003c/a> by the U.S. Department of Justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the courts, the academics who study this issue and the lawyers who argue the cases, there are three interpretations of the actions of Langer, who has acknowledged in court proceedings that he is a “serial litigator.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one, serial litigants are warriors for disability access, literally opening doors for other people by identifying obstacles and suing to fix them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the second, they are simply pawns of avaricious law firms who have created a cottage industry out of disability rights lawsuits. According to filings in a tax case, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article269332397.html\">one serial litigant\u003c/a> in Sacramento accumulated more than $1 million in settlements in 2014 alone. The firm representing him kept more than half the money and he kept the rest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘On the day he filed this lawsuit, he also filed six other lawsuits. Yet, [Langer] was unfamiliar with those suits as well as the businesses involved.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The third perspective, and one evidently held by the original judge deciding Langer’s case, is the least generous, handed down when Langer attempted to exclude his history as a serial litigator from trial. Several times in his April 5, 2021, opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Benitez questioned Langer’s credibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The court finds it doubtful that [Langer] would frequently travel to the property to purchase lobster, as he testified,” Benitez wrote. “This is bolstered by the fact [Langer] has filed previous lawsuits in which he admits he never intended to return to the premises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“On the day he filed this lawsuit, he also filed six other lawsuits. Yet, [Langer] was unfamiliar with those suits as well as the businesses involved.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942995\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11942995\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMattersIngest02-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A woman with short black hair and a baseball cap walks by a business with a blue accessibility sign displayed next to a ramp.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMattersIngest02-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMattersIngest02-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMattersIngest02-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMattersIngest02.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An accessibility sign at the entrance of a business in Chinatown, San Francisco, on Feb. 18, 2023. \u003ccite>(Shelby Knowles/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Thousands of disability claims every year\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law in 1990, but the volume of lawsuits picked up in 2013, according to Seyfarth Shaw, the law firm that \u003ca href=\"https://www.adatitleiii.com/2023/02/ada-title-iii-federal-lawsuits-numbers-are-down-but-likely-to-rebound-in-2023/\">tracks federal disability lawsuits\u003c/a>. Since then, 33,100 claims were filed in federal courts in California. New York had 15,427, and Florida had 14,296 in the last decade. The next seven states barely topped 1,000 cases combined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That initial ruling in the Langer case, coupled with high-profile moves by liberal district attorneys in San Francisco and Los Angeles against a firm known for representing serial filers, appeared to chill the number of disability claims filed against California businesses last year, according to data collected by Seyfarth Shaw. Last year, 2,519 cases were filed in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one of the most publicized California cases, an attorney who used a wheelchair \u003ca href=\"https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-exclusive-disabled-access-attorney-to-be-2012sep12-story.html\">filed 67 lawsuits against businesses\u003c/a> in 2005 in the tiny San Diego County mountain town of Julian, home of the Apple Days Festival, alleging that he could not access them. The attorney was later disbarred, in part because he pleaded no contest to filing federal disability lawsuits on behalf of a disabled client who had no idea the cases had been filed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But businesses in the town of Julian did indeed improve their disability access. In the words of a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-julian-working-toward-more-access-for-disabled-2007jun11-story.html\">\u003cem>North County Times\u003c/em> story from 2007\u003c/a>: “wider doors, lower counters, repaved parking lots, more disabled parking and signs, signs, signs.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The question in many of these cases comes down to the legal concept of “standing,” which asks whether the plaintiffs have actually suffered a consequence because of their disability, and whether they ever intended to return to the place where they encountered a problem. Benitez ruled that Langer did have standing, but his rights weren’t violated, in part because the parking spot in question wasn’t supposed to be publicly accessible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On appeal — and this is the other big reason plaintiffs file so often in California — the standing claim was received much more warmly, as it has been in other disability cases filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “The attempted use of past litigation to prevent a litigant from pursuing a valid claim in federal court warrants our most careful scrutiny,” the court, known as one of the country’s most liberal federal appeals courts, had written in a 2008 opinion cited in the Langer appellate decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, Langer’s arguments won over two judges on a three-judge panel. They reversed the Benitez decision and found that the lobster shop’s penchant for letting customers park in the tenant space made it, effectively, a public lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A business cannot offer parking to customers without disabilities while not offering that same benefit to customers with disabilities,” the two judges wrote. “That discrimination goes to the heart of the ADA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kisers have asked for a rehearing before all nine appellate court judges.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A service for disabled Californians\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Serial filers are the targets of misdirected anger, said Evelyn Clark, a Washington, D.C., attorney who uses a wheelchair and authored \u003ca href=\"https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/walee26&div=22&id=&page=\">a much-cited paper\u003c/a> in law school on serial litigants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Something that’s really small for you that just looks like, oh, it’s just one little step, could be a total barrier for someone like me trying to get in,” Clark said. “But nobody’s going to be 100% compliant with every tiny regulation under the ADA. So I can understand the frustration of business owners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But I’ve heard people in California talk about how they go out in a wheelchair and it’s almost kind of a reverse discrimination, where people just assume you’re there to sue them,” Clark said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the defense’s side, there’s another perception: that these lawsuits find the poorest store owners least able to defend themselves in a country where they may not speak the language or understand the legal system, with offers to settle that just so happen to be a little cheaper than mounting a defense.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Business owners on edge\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Business owners with a direct interest in the Langer case are hoping the Kisers get a rehearing before the full appeals court. Late last month, they filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing against the decision by the three-judge panel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Make no mistake, these ADA lawsuits are not about promoting the ideals of the ADA,” they wrote, “but rather, they are about the illegitimate transfer of wealth from historically marginalized communities and into the pockets of ADA plaintiff’s lawyers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a federal disability lawsuit that led Moji Saniefar, one of the authors of that brief, from white-collar securities litigation to defending businesses from federal disability rights lawsuits. Like an action movie sequel, this time it was personal: A serial litigant sued Saniefar’s father’s restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reza Saniefar was the owner of Zlfred’s, a well-loved Fresno cafe that closed during the coronavirus pandemic. An Iranian immigrant who fled the revolution in 1979, Reza Saniefar operated a small, family business. Locals evidently miss his restaurant enough to \u003ca href=\"http://whatmomscooking.com/2021/09/27/zlfreds/\">post and share copycat recipes\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cafe was named Zlfred’s because its former name was shared with another restaurant, called Alfred’s. When the other Alfred’s sued, Saniefar said, the previous owner simply stuck a Z where the A was. Thus, Zlfred’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Saniefar family adopted the same defiant attitude when the restaurant was sued over disability access in 2014. Moji was their attorney. They won, and then went on the offensive, taking the law firm that represented the plaintiff to court, claiming they used fraud and deception to coerce small businesses into settling the cases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The firm \u003ca href=\"https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/law-firms-settle-suit-accusing-them-of-civil-rico-conspiracy-to-collect-ada-settlements\">settled the case and shut down\u003c/a>, but it wasn’t the only firm that represents serial litigants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11942993\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11942993\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01.jpg\" alt=\"A blue accessibility sign hangs in the window of a building's entrance next to a variety of colorful, stuffed animals on display.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/03/CalMatterIngest01-1920x1281.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An accessibility sign hangs at the entrance of a Chinatown business in San Francisco on Feb. 18, 2023. A recent court ruling could set a new precedent in regards to ADA violations in California. Yet, some believe these complaints are targeting immigrant communities. \u003ccite>(Shelby Knowles/CalMatters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A much larger one, called Potter Handy, was accused by the liberal district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties of “bombarding California’s small businesses with abusive boilerplate lawsuits,” and instructing serial litigants to pretend to have encountered barriers at a business they never visited. They further accused Potter Handy of having its clients file fake disability claims that led to settlements.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Each year Potter Handy uses ADA/Unruh lawsuits to shake down hundreds or even thousands of small businesses to pay it cash settlements, regardless of whether the businesses actually violate the ADA,” wrote Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón and former San Francisco City and County District Attorney Chesa Boudin in an April 2022 state court filing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They said the lawsuits not only threaten small businesses, but also “unfairly taint the reputation of other innocent disabled consumers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Potter Handy, which also does business as the Center for Disability Access, did not return calls seeking comment. Neither did Gascón. Boudin and Gascón wrote in their complaint that Potter Handy was particularly active in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Multiple Chinatown businesses were sued for allegedly having inaccessible outdoor dining tables during the early months of 2021,” they wrote, but “those businesses were open for takeout only during that time and had no dining tables at all — indoor or outdoor.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Potter Handy responded in court that Boudin and Gascón were making the accusations for political reasons. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/Da-s-Lawsuit-Against-Potter-Handy-Law-Firm-17408200.php\">dismissed the case\u003c/a>, and ruled that Potter Handy’s attorneys were covered by California’s “litigation privilege.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"h-a-client-who-wanted-to-fight\">A client who wanted to fight\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the Langer case, Moji Saniefar is representing a handful of Bay Area merchant associations, including the Chinatown Merchants United Association of San Francisco, who are panicked about the appellate court ruling in Langer’s favor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Serial ADA plaintiff’s lawyers recognize that the justice gap makes [small businesses] far more likely to settle cases quickly and without prolonged litigation,” according to the Feb. 16 friend-of-the-court brief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hunt, the Texas attorney who defends businesses in disability rights cases, said it’s unusual for his clients to take a case to court, much less all the way up to federal appeals court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You have to have a particularly angry, rich, stubborn client to not settle the case,” Hunt said. “I’m looking for angry, rich, stubborn clients. I would love to have some, but so far, when I tell my clients that they can get out of it by settling it for cheaper than the cost of defense, then they’re like, you know, let’s just settle it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attorney for the Kisers, whom Langer is suing, said the Legislature needs to step in. He agrees that his clients may fit Hunt’s description.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mr. Kiser’s perspective is, hey, we did nothing wrong and we don’t think we should have to pay this guy,” said Sam Henein, a San Diego lawyer. “He says if the judge tells me I did something wrong, I guess then I have to pay, but I don’t think I did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The solution, said Clark, the D.C. attorney, is to amend the ADA’s enforcement mechanism from its current iteration to a “notice and cure” standard, which would give businesses 60 or 90 days to fix the accessibility issue without money changing hands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "'Lyft's Got to Look Into Its Own Soul': Judge Weighs Requiring Lyft to Provide Wheelchair Users Equal Service",
"title": "'Lyft's Got to Look Into Its Own Soul': Judge Weighs Requiring Lyft to Provide Wheelchair Users Equal Service",
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"content": "\u003cp>A trial to determine if Lyft violates the Americans With Disabilities Act concluded in San Francisco on Tuesday. A pending decision by Judge William Alsup may soon determine if the ride-hail company will be compelled to provide service for those who use powered wheelchairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Berkeley and New York-based Disability Rights Advocates group filed the class-action \u003ca href=\"https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5776959/Disability-Rights-Lawsuit-versus-Lyft.pdf\">complaint\u003c/a> in US Northern District Court \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11734339/lawsuit-seeks-to-force-lyft-to-provide-full-equal-service-to-the-disabled\">against Lyft in 2019\u003c/a>, alleging it ran afoul of the ADA by failing to ensure service for those who require special wheelchair accessible vehicles (WAVs) to get around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The suit didn't aim to pinch Lyft's purse — instead, disability community advocates wished to push the ride-hail giant to provide wheelchair-accessible service in the Bay Area that's \"full and equal\" to the service it provides the rest of the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In court, Alsup said his decision would likely not come later than August.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Wheelchair Users Left in Limbo\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Powered wheelchairs are preferred in the disability community for the independence they allow, but vehicles able to fit them properly can cost tens of thousands of dollars to retrofit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Bay Area's traditional taxi industry used to have a robust number of drivers \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/luxor-cabs-financial-strain-jeopardizes-crucial-wheelchair-taxi-trips/\">behind a fleet equipped with wheelchair-accessible vans\u003c/a>. But as Lyft and competitor Uber, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnet.com/news/uber-discriminates-against-people-in-wheelchairs-lawsuit-says/\">faced a similar lawsuit in 2018\u003c/a>, rose to prominence over the last decade, taxi drivers fled the industry by the hundreds. Those wheelchair rides vanished with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Dorene Giacopini, lawsuit plaintiff and member of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission\"]'[There's an] exhaustion that I think our community feels ... And the frustration that after having worked so hard and won such great success with the ADA, that these companies have come along and caused us to lose some of the independence we had gained.'[/pullquote]And since ride-hail companies contend they are merely app services which connect drivers with riders, instead of owning fleets of vehicles themselves, Lyft's attorneys argued in court that providing a wheelchair service would be an entirely new business altogether — and that it's therefore outside the bounds of what the ADA mandates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without that service, however, wheelchair users are left in limbo, said Dorene Giacopini, one of the suit's plaintiffs. Giacopini also sits on the Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and is president of the board of Community Resources for Independent Living in Hayward. She uses a powered wheelchair for her mobility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When talking about Lyft's lack of wheelchair accessibility, and the ride-hailing industry's decimation of similar services from taxis, Giacopini likened the situation to what she called the \"bad old days\" when people with disabilities were confined to their bedrooms by their families. Often they were trapped there for life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I remember being a kid and people talking about shut-ins, people who are just stuck in their houses\" due to a family's shame about their disability. Lyft's indifference to the effect their company's growth had on people with disabilities hearkened back to those times, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Giacopini's own parents fought against her grandparents, who said \"don't talk about her disability, keep her home.\" Lyft's practices are contributing to making some people with disabilities become shut-ins again, Giacopini told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said there's an \"exhaustion that I think our community feels with having to deal with the inaccessible environment ... And the frustration that after having worked so hard and won such great success with the Americans with Disabilities Act, that these companies have come along and caused us to lose some of the independence we had gained.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>'Lyft Simply Refuses to Try'\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Lyft defended its early wheelchair accessibility pilot in the Bay Area, which it has attempted in fits and starts since 2019. The program started with just five vehicles for the nine-county region, but a planned partnership with rental car company Hertz was to scale up its fleet to 65 vehicles, which would be owned by Hertz. That pilot project never got off the ground, as Hertz declared bankruptcy in May 2020. After that, Lyft reduced its number of WAVs to just two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Lyft’s goal is to provide access to WAV service in a reliable and sustainable way, and this trial has highlighted how incredibly challenging it is to facilitate WAV service on-demand,\" a Lyft spokesperson wrote in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the trial, attorneys for disability community advocates argued Lyft already had WAV programs running in 10 different markets, including New York and Oregon, and could replicate that service in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also pointed out Lyft got roughly $2 million from its state regulators – the California Public Utilities Commission – to help get its WAV pilot project. They argued that Lyft itself determined it could potentially cover 80% of the demand for wheelchair service with a fleet of 65 vehicles, though Lyft witnesses later countered that claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates' attorney Stuart Seaborn argued Lyft scrapped its large-scale plan to provide wheelchair-accessible service at the start of the pandemic before it even had a chance to fail. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The evidence has shown Lyft, a company that revolutionized the way people travel in this country, is fully capable of implementing wheelchair-accessible service in the Bay Area,\" Seaborn said in the case's closing arguments. \"The evidence shows Lyft simply refuses to try.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside label='Disability Community Coverage' tag='disability-community']Attorneys want to give Lyft a year to get a program for the disability community off the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Alsup spelled some doubt for the disability community advocates, indicating they weren't asking for a specific enough change to Lyft's service, like a direct modification to the design of a vehicle, to meet ADA requirements. Instead, Alsup said, they were asking the court to order Lyft to begin a process to discover what business modifications are needed to run a wheelchair service in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Lyft implements these programs all over the country,\" Seaborn countered. \"The fact of the matter is, they do provide those services.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup also took aim at advocates' arguments that Lyft could still feasibly implement the 65 wheelchair-accessible vehicle program in the Bay Area without Hertz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You make it sound so easy. I think Lyft should just hire you, stick you in charge, and then you be responsible for making it cost-effective,\" Alsup told Seaborn, the advocates' attorney. \"It's a problem for me as a judge to wonder where that 65 [vehicles] will come from.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attorneys for the advocates then pointed out that despite Hertz's bankruptcy, Lyft failed to reach out to other car companies to form partnerships to supply wheelchair-accessible vehicles, including Enterprise, or MobilityWorks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the trial, Lyft argued that although they have wheelchair-accessible vehicles in other cities, they are only provided because cities or states have regulations that mandated them. Those wheelchair programs don't make money or break even, they argued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We are trying to solve this problem long term for our business overall,\" Joyce Chan, vice president of product operations at Lyft testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>'You're Just Donating That Money to the State Treasury?'\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Some California lawmakers have tried to help Lyft help itself, by creating a program that charges Lyft a 10-cent-per-ride fee that is deposited in a fund expressly for wheelchair operations. That program, compelled by Senate Bill 1376, authored by Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, was signed into law by former Gov. Jerry Brown in late 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the program made $1.8 million available to Lyft since 2019, Chan argued it needed at least $2 million annually to run a wheelchair-accessible program locally. The funding also fluctuates so often that they cannot effectively calculate the amount into their annual budget, Chan argued, another complicating factor for utilizing it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Lyft pays the fee and it goes to the CPUC, largely unused, Chan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Alsup was skeptical of that practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You're just donating that money to the State Treasury without trying to put a program in place?\" he asked Chan, to which she replied, \"Yes, sir.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CPUC is also in the process of ruling on wheelchair accessibility regulations for Lyft and Uber, but witnesses said the CPUC may not finish deliberating on those rules until 2025. Alsup said that CPUC proceeding may have impacted his ruling, but only if it were closer to fruition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A lot of people who need these wheelchair vehicles are going to be dead by 2025,\" Alsup told attorneys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"US District Court Judge William Alsup\"]'The people you're leaving out are these disabled people, who want to go out and have a drink every now and then too, but Lyft will not serve them ... And you ought to think about how that looks, while all those cool people are going out and having their drinks and you're cashing in on that business model.'[/pullquote]Data scientists and technical experts also testified for Lyft, arguing that the disability community was so small that the company could not generate enough data to effectively serve them. The only way to do so would be for Lyft to manually dispatch drivers, almost like a taxi service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup was skeptical of that claim, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"But you know, your entire company started with zero data points,\" he told one witness. \"You're making it sound like you're mentally paralyzed and can't make a decision unless you've got a million data points.\" So, Alsup said, \"You're exaggerating.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her closing arguments Tuesday, Jiyun Lee, an attorney for Lyft, asked the judge, \"who should bear the financial burden\" of learning and experimentation to create an on-demand service for wheelchair users that has \"never been done before?\" Private entities shouldn't bear the burden of modifying vehicles to be wheelchair accessible, which can cost more than $20,000 per vehicle, Lee said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Lee argued, the ADA says people with disabilities can ask for \"reasonable\" modification to make services accessible, but what disability community advocates are asking for is too much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That burden surpasses what the ADA calls for, with \"reasonable\" accommodations, Lee said. In fact, she said, \"that's just outright establishing a new transportation service.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seaborn shot back that Lyft already runs wheelchair-accessible programs throughout the country, and therefore \"cannot argue that something it is already doing would fundamentally alter its business, though doing so may be cost-prohibitive in our region.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the outcome of the trial may not be known until August, Alsup had harsh words for the ride-hail company on the case writ large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Your business model is based on the cool people in their 20s and 30s who like to go to bars and spend money and get a ride home, the people who are fully able to walk around, and people in this part of the world who have lots of money to spend,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So you're cashing in on that model. And the people you're leaving out are these disabled people, who want to go out and have a drink every now and then too, but Lyft will not serve them. Lyft just will not serve them ... And you ought to think about how that looks, while all those cool people are going out and having their drinks and you're cashing in on that business model.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Lyft attorney tried to interrupt him at this point, but Alsup continued, \"I think Lyft's got to look into its own soul to see what's best and what looks best. This is just me talking as a citizen. As a judge, I'm going to rule according to the law, and the plaintiffs may lose on account of this, because the law is not as favorable to the plaintiffs as they seem to think.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, Alsup said, \"I'm telling you how it looks.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "A 2019 class-action lawsuit alleges Lyft violates the ADA by failing to provide service for those who require special wheelchair accessible vehicles. A trial in the case ended Tuesday in San Francisco.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A trial to determine if Lyft violates the Americans With Disabilities Act concluded in San Francisco on Tuesday. A pending decision by Judge William Alsup may soon determine if the ride-hail company will be compelled to provide service for those who use powered wheelchairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Berkeley and New York-based Disability Rights Advocates group filed the class-action \u003ca href=\"https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5776959/Disability-Rights-Lawsuit-versus-Lyft.pdf\">complaint\u003c/a> in US Northern District Court \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11734339/lawsuit-seeks-to-force-lyft-to-provide-full-equal-service-to-the-disabled\">against Lyft in 2019\u003c/a>, alleging it ran afoul of the ADA by failing to ensure service for those who require special wheelchair accessible vehicles (WAVs) to get around.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The suit didn't aim to pinch Lyft's purse — instead, disability community advocates wished to push the ride-hail giant to provide wheelchair-accessible service in the Bay Area that's \"full and equal\" to the service it provides the rest of the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In court, Alsup said his decision would likely not come later than August.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Wheelchair Users Left in Limbo\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Powered wheelchairs are preferred in the disability community for the independence they allow, but vehicles able to fit them properly can cost tens of thousands of dollars to retrofit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Bay Area's traditional taxi industry used to have a robust number of drivers \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/luxor-cabs-financial-strain-jeopardizes-crucial-wheelchair-taxi-trips/\">behind a fleet equipped with wheelchair-accessible vans\u003c/a>. But as Lyft and competitor Uber, which \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnet.com/news/uber-discriminates-against-people-in-wheelchairs-lawsuit-says/\">faced a similar lawsuit in 2018\u003c/a>, rose to prominence over the last decade, taxi drivers fled the industry by the hundreds. Those wheelchair rides vanished with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "'[There's an] exhaustion that I think our community feels ... And the frustration that after having worked so hard and won such great success with the ADA, that these companies have come along and caused us to lose some of the independence we had gained.'",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>And since ride-hail companies contend they are merely app services which connect drivers with riders, instead of owning fleets of vehicles themselves, Lyft's attorneys argued in court that providing a wheelchair service would be an entirely new business altogether — and that it's therefore outside the bounds of what the ADA mandates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without that service, however, wheelchair users are left in limbo, said Dorene Giacopini, one of the suit's plaintiffs. Giacopini also sits on the Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and is president of the board of Community Resources for Independent Living in Hayward. She uses a powered wheelchair for her mobility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When talking about Lyft's lack of wheelchair accessibility, and the ride-hailing industry's decimation of similar services from taxis, Giacopini likened the situation to what she called the \"bad old days\" when people with disabilities were confined to their bedrooms by their families. Often they were trapped there for life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I remember being a kid and people talking about shut-ins, people who are just stuck in their houses\" due to a family's shame about their disability. Lyft's indifference to the effect their company's growth had on people with disabilities hearkened back to those times, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Giacopini's own parents fought against her grandparents, who said \"don't talk about her disability, keep her home.\" Lyft's practices are contributing to making some people with disabilities become shut-ins again, Giacopini told KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said there's an \"exhaustion that I think our community feels with having to deal with the inaccessible environment ... And the frustration that after having worked so hard and won such great success with the Americans with Disabilities Act, that these companies have come along and caused us to lose some of the independence we had gained.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>'Lyft Simply Refuses to Try'\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Lyft defended its early wheelchair accessibility pilot in the Bay Area, which it has attempted in fits and starts since 2019. The program started with just five vehicles for the nine-county region, but a planned partnership with rental car company Hertz was to scale up its fleet to 65 vehicles, which would be owned by Hertz. That pilot project never got off the ground, as Hertz declared bankruptcy in May 2020. After that, Lyft reduced its number of WAVs to just two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Lyft’s goal is to provide access to WAV service in a reliable and sustainable way, and this trial has highlighted how incredibly challenging it is to facilitate WAV service on-demand,\" a Lyft spokesperson wrote in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the trial, attorneys for disability community advocates argued Lyft already had WAV programs running in 10 different markets, including New York and Oregon, and could replicate that service in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also pointed out Lyft got roughly $2 million from its state regulators – the California Public Utilities Commission – to help get its WAV pilot project. They argued that Lyft itself determined it could potentially cover 80% of the demand for wheelchair service with a fleet of 65 vehicles, though Lyft witnesses later countered that claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates' attorney Stuart Seaborn argued Lyft scrapped its large-scale plan to provide wheelchair-accessible service at the start of the pandemic before it even had a chance to fail. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The evidence has shown Lyft, a company that revolutionized the way people travel in this country, is fully capable of implementing wheelchair-accessible service in the Bay Area,\" Seaborn said in the case's closing arguments. \"The evidence shows Lyft simply refuses to try.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Attorneys want to give Lyft a year to get a program for the disability community off the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Alsup spelled some doubt for the disability community advocates, indicating they weren't asking for a specific enough change to Lyft's service, like a direct modification to the design of a vehicle, to meet ADA requirements. Instead, Alsup said, they were asking the court to order Lyft to begin a process to discover what business modifications are needed to run a wheelchair service in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Lyft implements these programs all over the country,\" Seaborn countered. \"The fact of the matter is, they do provide those services.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup also took aim at advocates' arguments that Lyft could still feasibly implement the 65 wheelchair-accessible vehicle program in the Bay Area without Hertz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You make it sound so easy. I think Lyft should just hire you, stick you in charge, and then you be responsible for making it cost-effective,\" Alsup told Seaborn, the advocates' attorney. \"It's a problem for me as a judge to wonder where that 65 [vehicles] will come from.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attorneys for the advocates then pointed out that despite Hertz's bankruptcy, Lyft failed to reach out to other car companies to form partnerships to supply wheelchair-accessible vehicles, including Enterprise, or MobilityWorks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout the trial, Lyft argued that although they have wheelchair-accessible vehicles in other cities, they are only provided because cities or states have regulations that mandated them. Those wheelchair programs don't make money or break even, they argued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We are trying to solve this problem long term for our business overall,\" Joyce Chan, vice president of product operations at Lyft testified.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>'You're Just Donating That Money to the State Treasury?'\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Some California lawmakers have tried to help Lyft help itself, by creating a program that charges Lyft a 10-cent-per-ride fee that is deposited in a fund expressly for wheelchair operations. That program, compelled by Senate Bill 1376, authored by Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, was signed into law by former Gov. Jerry Brown in late 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the program made $1.8 million available to Lyft since 2019, Chan argued it needed at least $2 million annually to run a wheelchair-accessible program locally. The funding also fluctuates so often that they cannot effectively calculate the amount into their annual budget, Chan argued, another complicating factor for utilizing it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Lyft pays the fee and it goes to the CPUC, largely unused, Chan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Alsup was skeptical of that practice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You're just donating that money to the State Treasury without trying to put a program in place?\" he asked Chan, to which she replied, \"Yes, sir.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CPUC is also in the process of ruling on wheelchair accessibility regulations for Lyft and Uber, but witnesses said the CPUC may not finish deliberating on those rules until 2025. Alsup said that CPUC proceeding may have impacted his ruling, but only if it were closer to fruition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"A lot of people who need these wheelchair vehicles are going to be dead by 2025,\" Alsup told attorneys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Data scientists and technical experts also testified for Lyft, arguing that the disability community was so small that the company could not generate enough data to effectively serve them. The only way to do so would be for Lyft to manually dispatch drivers, almost like a taxi service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alsup was skeptical of that claim, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"But you know, your entire company started with zero data points,\" he told one witness. \"You're making it sound like you're mentally paralyzed and can't make a decision unless you've got a million data points.\" So, Alsup said, \"You're exaggerating.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her closing arguments Tuesday, Jiyun Lee, an attorney for Lyft, asked the judge, \"who should bear the financial burden\" of learning and experimentation to create an on-demand service for wheelchair users that has \"never been done before?\" Private entities shouldn't bear the burden of modifying vehicles to be wheelchair accessible, which can cost more than $20,000 per vehicle, Lee said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Lee argued, the ADA says people with disabilities can ask for \"reasonable\" modification to make services accessible, but what disability community advocates are asking for is too much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That burden surpasses what the ADA calls for, with \"reasonable\" accommodations, Lee said. In fact, she said, \"that's just outright establishing a new transportation service.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seaborn shot back that Lyft already runs wheelchair-accessible programs throughout the country, and therefore \"cannot argue that something it is already doing would fundamentally alter its business, though doing so may be cost-prohibitive in our region.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the outcome of the trial may not be known until August, Alsup had harsh words for the ride-hail company on the case writ large.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Your business model is based on the cool people in their 20s and 30s who like to go to bars and spend money and get a ride home, the people who are fully able to walk around, and people in this part of the world who have lots of money to spend,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So you're cashing in on that model. And the people you're leaving out are these disabled people, who want to go out and have a drink every now and then too, but Lyft will not serve them. Lyft just will not serve them ... And you ought to think about how that looks, while all those cool people are going out and having their drinks and you're cashing in on that business model.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Lyft attorney tried to interrupt him at this point, but Alsup continued, \"I think Lyft's got to look into its own soul to see what's best and what looks best. This is just me talking as a citizen. As a judge, I'm going to rule according to the law, and the plaintiffs may lose on account of this, because the law is not as favorable to the plaintiffs as they seem to think.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, Alsup said, \"I'm telling you how it looks.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "'It Just Burns Me Up': Disability Activist Alice Wong Reminds California This Pandemic Is Far From Over",
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"headTitle": "‘It Just Burns Me Up’: Disability Activist Alice Wong Reminds California This Pandemic Is Far From Over | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Alice Wong is an influential disability rights activist, media maker and podcaster who hosts the podcast \u003ca href=\"https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/podcast/\">Disability/Visibility \u003c/a>from her home in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some highlights from her recent conversation with California Report Magazine host Sasha Khokha.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Comments have been edited for brevity and clarity. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What’s most troubling about the COVID-19 pandemic:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seeing so many people go outside and really, absolutely not social distancing, not wearing masks. It just burns me up, the way people are so ready to be over the pandemic. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to it. They’re going to actually create more infections and subsequently more deaths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Alice Wong, disability rights activist\"]“We’ve learned how to make do with living in a world that’s rather hostile and never designed for us in the first place. There’s a lot of lessons and insight that disabled folks have to share.”[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re still advising high-risk people like myself to just stay at home. I feel like this sets up this very unfair dynamic where the burden of staying safe and healthy falls upon those who are the most marginalized and the most impacted. It’s going to create additional complications, consequences that all of us are going to suffer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On her recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.vox.com/first-person/2020/4/4/21204261/coronavirus-covid-19-disabled-people-disabilities-triage\">Vox essay\u003c/a>, “I’m Disabled and I need a ventilator to live. Am I expendable during this pandemic?”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It doesn’t surprise me that state guidelines or health systems would say, “We have only this many ventilators or this many staff or resources. You know, we really need to think about who are the most likely to benefit.” Any sort of calculus about who’s the most worthy often takes into account issues about quality of life. I do know that people see me with my wheelchair, with my ventilator on, and they just can’t imagine living this way. Some people just straight up feel like this kind of life is a life not worth living. These kinds of attitudes end up really excluding and discriminating against folks like me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside tag=\"disability\" label=\"related coverage\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How the pandemic has highlighted the importance of accessibility:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think it’s bittersweet. It’s wonderful that people are suddenly realizing, “Oh, you know, we should make this concert live streaming!” That working from home should be more flexible, or learning from home. Realizing and seeing how access really does benefit everyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I also feel some concern, and also some irritation, because disabled people have been advocating for this kind of thing for 30 years after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. There’s still this idea that requesting accommodations and advocating for them is somehow asking for something extra, some unfair advantage. These kinds of adaptations should absolutely remain and become a part of the default in the ways we organize and the ways we connect as people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The importance of caregivers:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a lot of us, like myself, it’s basically impossible to social distance and isolate ourselves. I can’t get out of bed without help. If I’m infected or if my [caregiver] is infected, there’s really no way to protect myself from exposure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size=\"medium\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Alice Wong, disability rights activist\"]“It’s so troubling to see people so ready to get the economy jump-started and just relaxing everything, while so many people are dying behind closed doors. I don’t understand why there isn’t more outrage over these deaths.”[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I want the people who help me to have all the protections, equipment and everything they need. This is a workforce that’s under the category of “essential workers,” but they truly aren’t valued in our society in terms of caregiving. This is a very gendered profession where so many of the workers are women of color or immigrants. I’d like to see an increase in wages and benefits for this workforce. Access to protective gear for anyone that does this kind of work, [including] family caregivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One thing that’s really distressing to me is the number of workers and people living at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities all over California and nationally that are dying and infected with COVID-19.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s so troubling to see people so ready to get the economy jump-started and just relaxing everything, while so many people are dying behind closed doors. I don’t understand why there isn’t more outrage over these deaths, because these systems, these institutions are broken. 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I’m talking about multiply-marginalized people, like black, disabled, chronically ill folks. Because we can’t separate the racism and the ableism and classism from this experience. This wasn’t the first crisis that disabled folks faced. This is just one of a long kind of arc. We’ve learned how to make do with living in a world that’s rather hostile and never designed for us in the first place. There’s a lot of lessons and insight that disabled folks have to share.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What it would take to build an inclusive future:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think the future could look so different. I think so much of what’s happened during the pandemic and the flaws in the structures and systems we have are basically a failure of imagination. What if we designed ways that people could be integrated into society with the supports and services in place so they have as much autonomy as possible? This kind of work is already happening. By communities of color, queer communities, disabled communities, in the way that we provide \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11806414/coronavirus-how-these-disabled-activists-are-taking-matters-into-their-own-sanitized-hand\">mutual aid\u003c/a> and care for one another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s such an opportunity to kind of take these lessons and scale it up so that we really can have people living the lives that they want. I feel like that’s absolutely possible. But it’s just it’s a matter of a culture shift and political will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11819597\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 389px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11819597\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43259_Disability_Visibility6-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Alice Wong's book, Disability/Visibility: First Person Stories for the 21st Century, comes out in June 2020.\" width=\"389\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43259_Disability_Visibility6-qut.jpg 778w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43259_Disability_Visibility6-qut-160x247.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 389px) 100vw, 389px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alice Wong’s book, “Disability/Visibility: First Person Stories for the 21st Century,” comes out in June 2020. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Alice Wong)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Wong’s book “\u003ca href=\"https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/book/\">Disability/Visibility: First Person Stories for the 21st Century\u003c/a>” comes out in June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Alice Wong is an influential disability rights activist, media maker and podcaster who hosts the podcast \u003ca href=\"https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/podcast/\">Disability/Visibility \u003c/a>from her home in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some highlights from her recent conversation with California Report Magazine host Sasha Khokha.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Comments have been edited for brevity and clarity. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What’s most troubling about the COVID-19 pandemic:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Seeing so many people go outside and really, absolutely not social distancing, not wearing masks. It just burns me up, the way people are so ready to be over the pandemic. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to it. They’re going to actually create more infections and subsequently more deaths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re still advising high-risk people like myself to just stay at home. I feel like this sets up this very unfair dynamic where the burden of staying safe and healthy falls upon those who are the most marginalized and the most impacted. It’s going to create additional complications, consequences that all of us are going to suffer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On her recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.vox.com/first-person/2020/4/4/21204261/coronavirus-covid-19-disabled-people-disabilities-triage\">Vox essay\u003c/a>, “I’m Disabled and I need a ventilator to live. Am I expendable during this pandemic?”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It doesn’t surprise me that state guidelines or health systems would say, “We have only this many ventilators or this many staff or resources. You know, we really need to think about who are the most likely to benefit.” Any sort of calculus about who’s the most worthy often takes into account issues about quality of life. I do know that people see me with my wheelchair, with my ventilator on, and they just can’t imagine living this way. Some people just straight up feel like this kind of life is a life not worth living. These kinds of attitudes end up really excluding and discriminating against folks like me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How the pandemic has highlighted the importance of accessibility:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think it’s bittersweet. It’s wonderful that people are suddenly realizing, “Oh, you know, we should make this concert live streaming!” That working from home should be more flexible, or learning from home. Realizing and seeing how access really does benefit everyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I also feel some concern, and also some irritation, because disabled people have been advocating for this kind of thing for 30 years after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. There’s still this idea that requesting accommodations and advocating for them is somehow asking for something extra, some unfair advantage. These kinds of adaptations should absolutely remain and become a part of the default in the ways we organize and the ways we connect as people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The importance of caregivers:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a lot of us, like myself, it’s basically impossible to social distance and isolate ourselves. I can’t get out of bed without help. If I’m infected or if my [caregiver] is infected, there’s really no way to protect myself from exposure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I want the people who help me to have all the protections, equipment and everything they need. This is a workforce that’s under the category of “essential workers,” but they truly aren’t valued in our society in terms of caregiving. This is a very gendered profession where so many of the workers are women of color or immigrants. I’d like to see an increase in wages and benefits for this workforce. Access to protective gear for anyone that does this kind of work, [including] family caregivers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One thing that’s really distressing to me is the number of workers and people living at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities all over California and nationally that are dying and infected with COVID-19.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s so troubling to see people so ready to get the economy jump-started and just relaxing everything, while so many people are dying behind closed doors. I don’t understand why there isn’t more outrage over these deaths, because these systems, these institutions are broken. This a really important time to think about, to rethink, about why these systems exist and to really question them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11819587\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11819587\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43260_podcast-katt-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Disability rights activist Alice Wong podcasting at her desk at home.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43260_podcast-katt-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43260_podcast-katt-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43260_podcast-katt-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43260_podcast-katt-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43260_podcast-katt-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43260_podcast-katt-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43260_podcast-katt-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43260_podcast-katt-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43260_podcast-katt-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Disability rights activist Alice Wong podcasting at her desk at home. \u003ccite>(Eddie Hernandez Photography)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What she’s hearing from her podcast listeners:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We really need more stories and perspectives by the people who are most impacted by this pandemic. I’m talking about multiply-marginalized people, like black, disabled, chronically ill folks. Because we can’t separate the racism and the ableism and classism from this experience. This wasn’t the first crisis that disabled folks faced. This is just one of a long kind of arc. We’ve learned how to make do with living in a world that’s rather hostile and never designed for us in the first place. There’s a lot of lessons and insight that disabled folks have to share.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What it would take to build an inclusive future:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think the future could look so different. I think so much of what’s happened during the pandemic and the flaws in the structures and systems we have are basically a failure of imagination. What if we designed ways that people could be integrated into society with the supports and services in place so they have as much autonomy as possible? This kind of work is already happening. By communities of color, queer communities, disabled communities, in the way that we provide \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11806414/coronavirus-how-these-disabled-activists-are-taking-matters-into-their-own-sanitized-hand\">mutual aid\u003c/a> and care for one another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s such an opportunity to kind of take these lessons and scale it up so that we really can have people living the lives that they want. I feel like that’s absolutely possible. But it’s just it’s a matter of a culture shift and political will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11819597\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 389px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11819597\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43259_Disability_Visibility6-qut.jpg\" alt=\"Alice Wong's book, Disability/Visibility: First Person Stories for the 21st Century, comes out in June 2020.\" width=\"389\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43259_Disability_Visibility6-qut.jpg 778w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/05/RS43259_Disability_Visibility6-qut-160x247.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 389px) 100vw, 389px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alice Wong’s book, “Disability/Visibility: First Person Stories for the 21st Century,” comes out in June 2020. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Alice Wong)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Wong’s book “\u003ca href=\"https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/book/\">Disability/Visibility: First Person Stories for the 21st Century\u003c/a>” comes out in June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>So, you want to know about Sweets, the miniature wonder horse, also known as “the BART pony,” and how she wound up riding the train back and forth Tuesday through the Transbay Tube?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are the basics:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Sweets is a 4-year-old mare.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>She was rescued last year from a hoarding situation in Texas.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>She’s in training to be a service animal. (It came as news to me and probably many others that miniature horses qualify to work in that capacity under the Americans With Disabilities Act.)\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>She’s not entirely housebroken.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>She can ride an escalator.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>She wears sneakers sometimes.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>And to a non-horse person, me, she seems amiable, gentle and curious. But she doesn’t have much to say about her sudden celebrity.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>For the details, let’s turn to Vanessa Gilliam, a muscle therapist, theatrical stagehand and bartender and Sweets’ trainer, who introduced the Horse of the Hour and a stablemate at their leafy corral in the Solano County hills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/rodrlou/status/1191817989747699712\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilliam says the path that led to Tuesday’s Oakland-San Francisco round trip started as serendipity: After seeing a Netflix documentary on dogs earlier this year, she started thinking about working with service animals. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several days later she saw \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2246175798768454&id=191085114277543&__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARCETl8MVmIsXvkLyL6KbAvdwpdsNWweupRLpHHk2mw18n_G-AGpa33XqHQwnaQsGiYc9qenWW5Vjfv7n0VKIXWaXdapmbpYReQRiHQ9KR-aAaBNfrHO6HM4_T0s3kmk6naxsvxYtklK_GiwwPaQXCmo_YBSRquggJbY5FcWHusoLRzRPdaOBkgMZ7XAJNSstRqi7pN82evqe4SIxT3oBx0kVN_9Zvj9Io7QExsTl5oTxJHoKL1YqeC7eTAFhj-MeO4sn4BT3UTvI8LOKwOAxhhFQVXJQaacwfJ-DutndSbSP8xuYjRihFa-N3sRL52Aqwpn0TJm0JznXNEOGNixsyBcPQ&__tn__=-R\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an online post\u003c/a> from a friend who runs a horse rescue ranch in Monterey County. The friend was in the process of bringing more than 30 miniature horses seized in \u003ca href=\"https://abc13.com/pets-animals/nearly-300-dogs-and-mini-horses-rescued-in-grimes-county/3974589/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a Texas hoarding case\u003c/a> to California. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilliam, who had run her own equine and canine rescue program near San Luis Obispo before moving to the Bay Area, knew that miniature horses qualified as service animals under the Americans With Disabilities Act. That history and the sudden appearance of a herd of tiny horses at her friend’s ranch gave her an idea. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought, ‘Hey, miniature horses are ADA compliant, so let’s go pick some out and give it a whirl,’ ” Gilliam said. She wound up adopting two minis, as the small horses are often called: a 9-year-old chocolate brown gelding she named Cuzzi and a 4-year-old pinto mare she called Sweets. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She started training the horses in March, a difficult process for animals coming from a situation in which they had been neglected. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cuzzi — the name rhymes with Suzie — was sociable from the beginning, Gilliam says. Sweets “took a lot longer to warm up.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We would go in her stall, and she would run to the back of it, and we had to work on, ‘Hey, you can trust me, I’m OK, I’m not going to hurt you,’ ” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11785500\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d-800x592.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"592\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11785500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d-800x592.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d-1020x754.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d-1200x887.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d.jpg 1919w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sweets, the celebrated transit-riding miniature horse, and her trainer, Vanessa Gilliam. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gilliam says Cuzzi is probably unsuited to become a service animal. He’s friendly enough, but he tends to be skittish in unfamiliar situations. For instance, when Gilliam and a friend took the horses on an outing. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We tried taking them to the movies — ‘The Lion King,’ which is, ironically, really kind of hilarious,” she said. “But his nerves were too much, so we stayed for two previews and then left. You don’t know how they’re going to act until you take them to that situation. You prepare them as best you can at home by throwing everything you can at them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How exactly did Cuzzi exhibit nerves? \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Lots of defecating,” Gilliam said. “Every boom and light flash, he got startled.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By contrast, Sweets was so calm at the theater that she appeared ready to fall asleep. Gilliam says that’s one of the horse’s characteristics that made it plausible to her take on a more challenging adventure. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Service ponies need to be able to go into heavily populated areas, ride on public transportation and aid people,” Gilliam said. She describes Sweets’ work role, when she’s ready to take it on, as being “a mobility support animal — trained to help people getting around.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miniature horses appear to have debuted as service animals in the United States about 20 years ago. That’s when a North Carolina horse trainer and a visually impaired Maine client \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-mar-21-cl-40402-story.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">made headlines\u003c/a> when they took a miniature horse named Cuddles on a trip that involved airline flights and riding Atlanta’s MARTA transit system. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The client in that case, Dan Shaw, said one of the reasons he thought he’d prefer a mini horse to a dog as a service animal was its lifespan. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Horses live 35 to 40 years,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m an animal lover. To lose a dog after eight to 10 years, and then have another to train, and have to do that three or four times in my lifetime … that’s painful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilliam says horses have a vision advantage over dogs, too. Their eyes, positioned on the sides of their heads, give them a 350-degree field of vision. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She believes equines are fundamentally different from canines in another important way, too. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They are prey animals, where dogs are predators,” she said. “That means they are going to be more alert to potential dangers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Armed with those qualities, and eminently intelligent and trainable, miniature horses now appear more often as service animals — on \u003ca href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/american-airlines-passenger-takes-horse-service-animal-flight-2019-9\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">planes\u003c/a>, on \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnQ3YbdI2nc\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">trains\u003c/a> and in \u003ca href=\"https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-ae-service-horse-florida-restaurant-20180619-story.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">restaurants\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And now on BART. Gilliam says that Tuesday trip had a couple of goals. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had just bought a new set of tennis shoes for her, and we were just testing out her maneuverability in her new sneakers,” she said. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there was a bigger aim, for both horse and trainer, than trying out new shoes. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The whole experience was about trust,” Gilliam said. “How much does she trust us? How comfortable is she? How can we manage her stress? How can we expose her to things and make it not stressful next time?” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How did the journey unfold? \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilliam says she and a friend drove the 200-pound Sweets in a minivan from her barn near Fairfield to MacArthur BART in Oakland. Unable to find parking there after the morning rush hour, they drove to the Rockridge Station and parked nearby. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From there, they brought Sweets up to the fare gate and then to the platform on the station elevators. They immediately drew the attention of both BART employees and patrons, whom Gilliam says were overwhelmingly curious and friendly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leg one of the trip was from Rockridge to Montgomery Station in downtown San Francisco. After doing an errand there, Gilliam, Sweets and friend strolled down Market Street to BART’s Embarcadero Station for the ride back to Oakland. Back at Rockridge, Sweets tried something new, leaving the station via the down escalator. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trip wasn’t problem-free. Under federal \u003ca href=\"https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ADA regulations\u003c/a>, the No. 1 requirement for miniature horses working as service animals is that they be housebroken. And Sweets didn’t pass that test Tuesday, defecating on both train trips and peeing while riding on a BART elevator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11785504\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f-800x607.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"607\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11785504\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f-800x607.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f-160x121.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f-1020x774.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f-1200x911.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vanessa Gilliam and Sweets, the rescued miniature horse she’s been training for work as a service animal. Sweets became a BART celebrity during a Nov. 5 ride from Oakland to San Francisco and back. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Putting her in those stressful situations, she did have a couple accidents,” Gilliam said of the onboard episodes. “But we had a poop catcher, and anything that missed the poop catcher we immediately cleaned up and sanitized.” She added that an attendant on the elevator waved off her offer to deal with that mess, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Correcting that shortcoming in Sweets’ travel manners “is definitely the next thing we will be focusing on,” Gilliam said, adding that the horse is an excellent student. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She’s so smart and has such a good work ethic and is so willing to just do anything to please us, it’s amazing,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With more work to do, Gilliam says she has not placed Sweets with a client — yet. But she says mini horses have a future as service animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think these animals are incredibly smart and adaptable to being useful service animals, so I think people are going to be seeing more,” she said. “And I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who want to see Sweets out on BART as ‘the BART pony’ again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>So, you want to know about Sweets, the miniature wonder horse, also known as “the BART pony,” and how she wound up riding the train back and forth Tuesday through the Transbay Tube?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are the basics:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Sweets is a 4-year-old mare.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>She was rescued last year from a hoarding situation in Texas.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>She’s in training to be a service animal. (It came as news to me and probably many others that miniature horses qualify to work in that capacity under the Americans With Disabilities Act.)\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>She’s not entirely housebroken.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>She can ride an escalator.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>She wears sneakers sometimes.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>And to a non-horse person, me, she seems amiable, gentle and curious. But she doesn’t have much to say about her sudden celebrity.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>For the details, let’s turn to Vanessa Gilliam, a muscle therapist, theatrical stagehand and bartender and Sweets’ trainer, who introduced the Horse of the Hour and a stablemate at their leafy corral in the Solano County hills.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Gilliam says the path that led to Tuesday’s Oakland-San Francisco round trip started as serendipity: After seeing a Netflix documentary on dogs earlier this year, she started thinking about working with service animals. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several days later she saw \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2246175798768454&id=191085114277543&__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARCETl8MVmIsXvkLyL6KbAvdwpdsNWweupRLpHHk2mw18n_G-AGpa33XqHQwnaQsGiYc9qenWW5Vjfv7n0VKIXWaXdapmbpYReQRiHQ9KR-aAaBNfrHO6HM4_T0s3kmk6naxsvxYtklK_GiwwPaQXCmo_YBSRquggJbY5FcWHusoLRzRPdaOBkgMZ7XAJNSstRqi7pN82evqe4SIxT3oBx0kVN_9Zvj9Io7QExsTl5oTxJHoKL1YqeC7eTAFhj-MeO4sn4BT3UTvI8LOKwOAxhhFQVXJQaacwfJ-DutndSbSP8xuYjRihFa-N3sRL52Aqwpn0TJm0JznXNEOGNixsyBcPQ&__tn__=-R\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an online post\u003c/a> from a friend who runs a horse rescue ranch in Monterey County. The friend was in the process of bringing more than 30 miniature horses seized in \u003ca href=\"https://abc13.com/pets-animals/nearly-300-dogs-and-mini-horses-rescued-in-grimes-county/3974589/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a Texas hoarding case\u003c/a> to California. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilliam, who had run her own equine and canine rescue program near San Luis Obispo before moving to the Bay Area, knew that miniature horses qualified as service animals under the Americans With Disabilities Act. That history and the sudden appearance of a herd of tiny horses at her friend’s ranch gave her an idea. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought, ‘Hey, miniature horses are ADA compliant, so let’s go pick some out and give it a whirl,’ ” Gilliam said. She wound up adopting two minis, as the small horses are often called: a 9-year-old chocolate brown gelding she named Cuzzi and a 4-year-old pinto mare she called Sweets. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She started training the horses in March, a difficult process for animals coming from a situation in which they had been neglected. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cuzzi — the name rhymes with Suzie — was sociable from the beginning, Gilliam says. Sweets “took a lot longer to warm up.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We would go in her stall, and she would run to the back of it, and we had to work on, ‘Hey, you can trust me, I’m OK, I’m not going to hurt you,’ ” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11785500\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d-800x592.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"592\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11785500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d-800x592.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d-160x118.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d-1020x754.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d-1200x887.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106d.jpg 1919w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sweets, the celebrated transit-riding miniature horse, and her trainer, Vanessa Gilliam. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gilliam says Cuzzi is probably unsuited to become a service animal. He’s friendly enough, but he tends to be skittish in unfamiliar situations. For instance, when Gilliam and a friend took the horses on an outing. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We tried taking them to the movies — ‘The Lion King,’ which is, ironically, really kind of hilarious,” she said. “But his nerves were too much, so we stayed for two previews and then left. You don’t know how they’re going to act until you take them to that situation. You prepare them as best you can at home by throwing everything you can at them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How exactly did Cuzzi exhibit nerves? \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Lots of defecating,” Gilliam said. “Every boom and light flash, he got startled.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By contrast, Sweets was so calm at the theater that she appeared ready to fall asleep. Gilliam says that’s one of the horse’s characteristics that made it plausible to her take on a more challenging adventure. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Service ponies need to be able to go into heavily populated areas, ride on public transportation and aid people,” Gilliam said. She describes Sweets’ work role, when she’s ready to take it on, as being “a mobility support animal — trained to help people getting around.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miniature horses appear to have debuted as service animals in the United States about 20 years ago. That’s when a North Carolina horse trainer and a visually impaired Maine client \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-mar-21-cl-40402-story.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">made headlines\u003c/a> when they took a miniature horse named Cuddles on a trip that involved airline flights and riding Atlanta’s MARTA transit system. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The client in that case, Dan Shaw, said one of the reasons he thought he’d prefer a mini horse to a dog as a service animal was its lifespan. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Horses live 35 to 40 years,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m an animal lover. To lose a dog after eight to 10 years, and then have another to train, and have to do that three or four times in my lifetime … that’s painful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilliam says horses have a vision advantage over dogs, too. Their eyes, positioned on the sides of their heads, give them a 350-degree field of vision. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She believes equines are fundamentally different from canines in another important way, too. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They are prey animals, where dogs are predators,” she said. “That means they are going to be more alert to potential dangers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Armed with those qualities, and eminently intelligent and trainable, miniature horses now appear more often as service animals — on \u003ca href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/american-airlines-passenger-takes-horse-service-animal-flight-2019-9\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">planes\u003c/a>, on \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnQ3YbdI2nc\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">trains\u003c/a> and in \u003ca href=\"https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-ae-service-horse-florida-restaurant-20180619-story.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">restaurants\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And now on BART. Gilliam says that Tuesday trip had a couple of goals. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had just bought a new set of tennis shoes for her, and we were just testing out her maneuverability in her new sneakers,” she said. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there was a bigger aim, for both horse and trainer, than trying out new shoes. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The whole experience was about trust,” Gilliam said. “How much does she trust us? How comfortable is she? How can we manage her stress? How can we expose her to things and make it not stressful next time?” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How did the journey unfold? \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gilliam says she and a friend drove the 200-pound Sweets in a minivan from her barn near Fairfield to MacArthur BART in Oakland. Unable to find parking there after the morning rush hour, they drove to the Rockridge Station and parked nearby. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From there, they brought Sweets up to the fare gate and then to the platform on the station elevators. They immediately drew the attention of both BART employees and patrons, whom Gilliam says were overwhelmingly curious and friendly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leg one of the trip was from Rockridge to Montgomery Station in downtown San Francisco. After doing an errand there, Gilliam, Sweets and friend strolled down Market Street to BART’s Embarcadero Station for the ride back to Oakland. Back at Rockridge, Sweets tried something new, leaving the station via the down escalator. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trip wasn’t problem-free. Under federal \u003ca href=\"https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ADA regulations\u003c/a>, the No. 1 requirement for miniature horses working as service animals is that they be housebroken. And Sweets didn’t pass that test Tuesday, defecating on both train trips and peeing while riding on a BART elevator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11785504\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f-800x607.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"607\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11785504\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f-800x607.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f-160x121.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f-1020x774.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f-1200x911.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2019/11/bartpony191106f.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vanessa Gilliam and Sweets, the rescued miniature horse she’s been training for work as a service animal. Sweets became a BART celebrity during a Nov. 5 ride from Oakland to San Francisco and back. \u003ccite>(Dan Brekke/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Putting her in those stressful situations, she did have a couple accidents,” Gilliam said of the onboard episodes. “But we had a poop catcher, and anything that missed the poop catcher we immediately cleaned up and sanitized.” She added that an attendant on the elevator waved off her offer to deal with that mess, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Correcting that shortcoming in Sweets’ travel manners “is definitely the next thing we will be focusing on,” Gilliam said, adding that the horse is an excellent student. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She’s so smart and has such a good work ethic and is so willing to just do anything to please us, it’s amazing,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With more work to do, Gilliam says she has not placed Sweets with a client — yet. But she says mini horses have a future as service animals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think these animals are incredibly smart and adaptable to being useful service animals, so I think people are going to be seeing more,” she said. “And I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who want to see Sweets out on BART as ‘the BART pony’ again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"politicalbreakdown": {
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"radiolab": {
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"reveal": {
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},
"rightnowish": {
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"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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},
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"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
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},
"soldout": {
"id": "soldout",
"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
"info": "Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America",
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