As a former small business owner, I know how vulnerable our local entrepreneurs are. In fact, many of our small business owners are surviving on razor-thin margins, where even a minor hiccup in revenue can be fatal to the business and all of the local jobs it sustains.
Far too many of our businesses are the targets of frivolous lawsuits and, as a result, we continue to lose desperately needed jobs in our region.
We all believe the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a critically important law, which has made a tremendous impact in the lives of disabled Americans. The goals and protections that are the foundation of the ADA are not in dispute.
Unfortunately, a growing number of money-hungry trail lawyers have used the ADA as a tool to try and fleece small business owners.
While the ADA is a national law, California has become ground zero for ADA abuse lawsuits. In fact, California is home to more federal disability lawsuits than the next four states combined. A recent report determined that since 2005, more than 7,000 federal ADA suits were filed in California. If that’s not alarming enough, consider that more than 4,000 of those lawsuits were filed by a plaintiff who has filed at least 30 lawsuits.
Those figures and the real life toll it takes on small business owners is why I decided we have to reform the ADA and have introduced the ACCESS Act (H.R.994), which would alleviate the financial burden small businesses are facing, while still fulfilling the purpose of the ADA.
Under the reforms I have proposed with the ACCESS Act, if a disabled person believes a business is not in compliance with the ADA, they would be required to provide the owner or operator of the business with a written notice of the violation and clearly spell out the barrier to their access. Within 60 days the owner or operator would be required to provide the aggrieved person with a description outlining improvements that would be made to address the barrier. The owner or operator would then have 120 days to remove the infraction. The failure to meet any of these conditions would allow a lawsuit to go forward.
The goal of the ACCESS Act is to refocus the ADA on providing access for the disabled and to stop providing trail lawyers with access to the wallets of small business owners. Failing to protect our small business owners is really a failure to protect jobs.
Rep. Ken Calvert (CA-42)