District Court Says No Standing for Website ADA Claim Against Credit Union

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia recently held that a disabled plaintiff did not have standing to challenge the accessibility of a credit union’s website under the ADA because he was not eligible for membership in the credit union.  This is the third time this year that different judges in the same district have found a lack of standing on this basis.  Two of the three cases involve the same plaintiff suing different credit unions.

The plaintiff alleged that the credit union’s website provided insufficient access to the blind, in violation of the ADA.  The defendant is a federally-chartered credit union and, by law, can only offer membership and financial services to those within its field of membership.  Here, the plaintiff did not allege facts that would show that he or anyone in his family was within the credit union’s field of membership.  The district court reasoned that because the plaintiff could not become a member of the credit union, the plaintiff could not have suffered an injury in fact as a result of any alleged inability to access the website, as required for standing under Article III of the Constitution.

The case is Carroll v. ABNB Federal Credit Union, No. 2:17-cv-521, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37675, 2018 WL 1180317 (E.D.V.A. Ma. 5, 2018).