Three residents of Texas have filed a lawsuit that claims popular car services Uber and Lyft are violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by denying service to mobility impaired passengers.
In a complaint filed Monday in San Antonio, military veteran Dan Ramos and two Houston women, Laura Posadas and Tina Williams, ask a federal court to suspend the companies' operations until they provide wheelchair access.
The complaint notes that the trio rely on wheelchairs, and points to anti-discrimination provisions in the ADA and in a Department of Transportation regulation that covers taxi services. It claims:
Uber and Lyft allow their vehicles-for-hire to deny service to the disabled. In addition, Uber and Lyft provide no training or guidance to the vehicles-for-hire that use their service concerning lawfully meeting the needs of disabled consumers.
Uber and Lyft, which operate in a growing number of cities, and have experienced numerous legal clashes with regulators and the taxi industry, did not immediately return a request for comment.
The complaint does not state if all or just part of the Lyft and Uber fleets must become ADA complaint. According to a 2012 New York Times report, an appeals court dismissed an ADA-related class action over New York's failure to make more cabs wheelchair-accessible; at the time, around 230 of New York's yellow cabs could accommodate wheelchair passengers.
Here's the 6-page complaint, which was spotted by Courthouse News:
ADA Complaint Against Uber
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