Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer
The Supreme Court dismissed a high-profile disability-rights case without answering the question it agreed to hear — whether someone can sue hotels as an ADA 'tester' with no plans to visit — because the plaintiff dropped all her lawsuits after her attorney was sanctioned for fraud.
The decision leaves a nationwide circuit split unresolved: some federal appeals courts allow these tester suits, others do not, and the conflict will continue until the Court takes up the question again.
How it got here: A federal district court dismissed Laufer's suit for lack of standing; the First Circuit reversed; Acheson petitioned the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case, but Laufer then dropped her lawsuit before the Court issued a decision.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Deborah Laufer, a wheelchair user living in Florida, filed more than 600 lawsuits against hotels whose websites lacked accessibility details required by the Americans with Disabilities Act — even though she had no plans to visit most of those hotels. She sued Acheson Hotels, owner of a Maine bed and breakfast, after finding its website deficient, but later admitted she never intended to travel to Maine. Her attorney collected settlement fees in case after case before being sanctioned by a federal court for fraud.
The question before the Court
Can a person with a disability sue hotels for failing to post accessibility information online, even if she has no intention of ever visiting or booking a room there?
The Court's answer
The Court did not answer the standing question. Instead, it dismissed the case as moot — meaning there was no longer a live dispute to decide — because Laufer had voluntarily dropped all her pending ADA lawsuits, including this one, after a court suspended her attorney for misconduct. The Court acknowledged it had the authority to skip mootness and decide the standing issue directly, but chose not to, finding that Laufer's dismissals did not appear to be a calculated move to escape an unfavorable ruling.
Because the case became moot through Laufer's own unilateral action — she was the party who had won in the First Circuit — the Court applied its long-standing practice of vacating the lower court's judgment rather than leaving it intact. The First Circuit's ruling in Laufer's favor is wiped out, and the case is sent back with instructions to dismiss it as moot.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, and other public accommodations in parts of the country where courts allow tester suits remain exposed to wave litigation from plaintiffs who never intend to visit. Disability advocates who rely on tester lawsuits to push for website compliance also remain in legal limbo. Both sides must wait for the Court to revisit the issue in a future case that stays live.
What changes now
The First Circuit's ruling in Laufer's favor is erased, and the case returns to that court with instructions to dismiss it as moot. The core legal question — whether ADA tester plaintiffs who have no plans to visit a hotel can sue over missing accessibility information — remains unresolved. Courts in different parts of the country will continue to apply conflicting rules until the Supreme Court agrees to hear a future case that stays live through the end of the appeal.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly did not decide whether people who test ADA compliance without any intent to visit a hotel have standing to sue in federal court. That question continues to divide federal appeals courts, and the majority signaled only that it might handle a future evasion attempt differently — not that such tester suits are valid or invalid.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas agreed with vacating and remanding but would have gone further and actually answered the standing question. In his view, Laufer lacks standing because the ADA prohibits discrimination — it does not create a right to information — and Laufer had no plans to visit the hotel, so the missing website data meant nothing to her personally. He distinguished the Court's earlier Havens Realty ruling on tester standing under the Fair Housing Act, noting that law expressly grants a right to truthful housing information, a provision the ADA lacks. He argued the Court rewarded a transparent tactic for evading review.
Concurrence — Justice Jackson
Justice Jackson agreed the case is moot and should be dismissed on that basis, but objected to the majority's routine application of Munsingwear vacatur. She argued that mootness and vacatur are separate questions requiring separate analyses: mootness justifies only dismissal, while vacatur is an extraordinary equitable remedy that requires a case-by-case showing of actual unfairness — not mere disappointment at losing below. She ultimately concurred because the Court's established practice supports vacatur when the prevailing party below is the one who moots the case through voluntary action.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Federal courts can only decide live disputes. Once Laufer voluntarily dismissed all her pending ADA lawsuits — including this one — with no intent to refile, there was no longer an active controversy between the parties. The case became 'moot,' depriving the Court of a live case or controversy as required by Article III of the Constitution.
- Both mootness and standing are threshold limits on what federal courts may decide, and neither has priority over the other. The Court has discretion to pick which issue to address first. The Court chose mootness here because it was the simpler path, even though the standing question was the reason the Court agreed to hear the case.
- The Court's central factual concern was whether Laufer dismissed her cases strategically — to prevent a standing ruling that might go against her and against future tester plaintiffs. A transparent manipulation of the Court's docket, the majority signaled, might warrant pressing ahead to resolve the standing question anyway.
- The Court concluded Laufer's dismissal was not a bad-faith tactic. She dropped the suits after an external event — her attorney's court-ordered suspension for fraud — even though that attorney had no involvement in the Acheson case. The Court accepted her representation that she would not file future ADA tester lawsuits, and found no clear evidence of evasion.
- Under the Court's established Munsingwear practice — named for a 1950 case — when a case becomes moot through the unilateral action of the party that won in the lower court, the Court vacates that court's judgment rather than leaving it in place. This prevents the winning party from keeping the benefit of a favorable ruling that the losing party can no longer challenge on appeal.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms United States v. Munsingwear, Inc. (340 U. S. 36)
The Court reaffirmed its practice of vacating lower court judgments when cases become moot through the winning party's own action.
Reaffirms Sinochem Int'l Co. v. Malaysia Int'l Shipping Corp. (549 U. S. 422)
The Court reaffirmed that it may address threshold jurisdictional issues like mootness and standing in any order it chooses.