A State Supreme Court Judge ruled this week that a lawsuit filed against the MTA on behalf of a coalition of accessibility rights advocates does, in fact, represent a class of more than 500,000 people who claim they’ve been excluded from the subway system because of a lack of accessibility.
The 2017 lawsuit claims that because only 20% of the subway system has elevators, the MTA is in violation of the Americans with Disability Act and the New York City Human Rights Law.
While this is one of three lawsuits the group has filed against the MTA over a lack of accessible stations, the plaintiffs hope the certification, which the MTA sought to deny, will now compel the MTA to settle, rather than continue fighting the complaint, as the agency has done for several years.
“It’s time that they come to an agreement that the community can rely upon. When will this source of discrimination end?” said Susan Dooha, Executive Director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled New York, which is one of the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the MTA.
She wants the MTA to commit to making all 472 subway stations accessible.
Dooha said the 500,000 plaintiffs, which includes people with non-visible disabilities, like arthritis or multiple sclerosis, have faced discrimination from mass transit, reducing their access to jobs, school, and social events.
The MTA wouldn’t comment on the claims in the lawsuit, but said the class certification was “agreed to by all the parties.”
Dooha said the decision gives their case a real boost.
“They throw up roadblocks, like challenging our status as class representatives and we’ve just knocked that hurdle out of the ballpark,” Dooha said. “
The MTA has paused its current capital plan, which would have added 70 more accessible stations, although it wrote in a statement that it is “committed to completing” it. Dooha’s group continues to pursue the lawsuit, because the only reason the MTA began installing elevators in the system in the first place was because of a lawsuit over ADA violations. Dooha wants the commitment to be legally binding, not just a pledge in an MTA board book that could be subject to changes.
"The goal of making the entire system more accessible will continue to inform the way we approach everything we do at the MTA and we recently hired Quemuel Arroyo as the first ever Chief Accessibility Office to lead this work," MTA spokesman Andrei Berman wrote in a statement.
Arroyo, who was recently appointed to the position, said he doesn’t believe all stations need elevators and is exploring the possibility of installing ramps at some stations instead.
