Defending the ADA - and Winning

Last month, the Texas Civil Rights Project celebrated a significant legal victory over Cinemark Theatres with an El Paso judge's ruling that the stadium-style theatres, dubbed "wheelchair ghettoes" by TCRP legal director Jim Harrington, werein violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The complaint (filed on behalf of eight El Paso residents and two disability rights organizations) centered around the fact that the theatres, whichoffer steeply sloped seating to walking customers but require wheelchair users to sit directly in front of the screen, did not offer comparable amenities to disabled viewers- one requirement of the ADA. The case, which was scheduled for trial on August 31, was the first of three TCRP cases against Cinemark to be resolved in Texas.

Harrington said that the lawsuit, in which Judge Harry Lee Hudspeth issued a summary judgment requiring Cinemark to negotiate with the plaintiffs about redesigning its theatres, set a major precedent. "It's going to apply to the whole industry," he says. "If you have this one design and the courts say this design is no good, then the whole industry has to change."

Ultimately, Harrington says, the goal is to require all theatre designers to make seating accessible to wheelchair users comparable to that available to walking customers. Already, he says, Regal Theatres, the largest builder of stadium-style theatres nationwide, has begun redesigning its facilities, using ramps or side doors situated at mid-theatre level. "It would be very easy [for Cinemark] to do, but they've never bothered to do it," Harrington says. "Their strategy has been to delay and build - delay the courts and build as many theatres as they can." - E.C.B.