EMILY SEELENFREUND: We'll get started in just one minute, maybe.
Will one of you make an announcement for people to keep their cameras off except for when they're speaking, and their mics?
EMILY SEELENFREUND: I think we can go ahead and get started here. And yeah, just as a reminder to please keep muted and have your video off unless you're speaking or to ask a question, that would be great. We'll go ahead and jump into it. I thank you so much for coming to our panel. My name is Emily Seelenfreund I'm here with my colleague Rebecca Serbin. I'm a staff attorney at Disability Rights Advocates.
Disability Rights Advocates or DRA is a local nonprofit. We have offices in New York and California, although we litigate cases across the country. And we're primarily focused on high impact systemic class action work. On behalf of people with all types of disabilities. And I'm also a wheelchair user, dependent on elevators to ride the New York City subway. I'm here to talk about an issue I'm invested in both personally and professionally
Which is DRA's four cases against the New York's policy to make the New York City subway a more useable system for people who cannot use the stairs to access the subway.
REBECCA SERBIN: I'm Rebecca Serbin I'm also a staff attorney. I don't use a wheelchair and I do sometimes use subway elevators when they are available. And if anyone has questions during the presentation, please feel free to drop them in the chat or just interrupt us at any time. Thank you for joining us this afternoon.
So to get started with a little background about the subway system, the subway system is owned by New York City, who leases it to the New York City Transit Authority, which is a subsidiary agency of the transportation authority or MTA. And in 2017, just to give you a sense of the scope of the system, the MTA provided trips for 8 million daily subway riders.
And that totalled up to about 2.5 annual trips in a system that was available 24 hours a day. And New York City is the only city in the United States where over half of all households do not own a car and 39% of commuters travel to work daily via subway. As a former chairman noted New Yorkers and visitors alike continue to vote with their feet recognizing that riding the subway is the most efficient way to get around town.
All the MTA has a bus system and a paratransit system, there are ways in which the subway is unmatched by all of those. Particularly New York City is a place with gridlocked traffic so any transportation that is not above ground, is inherently less efficient. So the subway is particularly crucial for New Yorkers.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: So I want to talk about a tale of two cities, which is basically what New York is. So without disabilities the country's best transit system can take you from central park in Manhattan to catch a game in Mets stadium in Queens. And by contrast it offers its residents with mobility disabilities a shadow system.
As you can see a mere fourth of the stations, only 75% of the 472 stations have elevators — sorry. Only 25% have elevators. So for the 550,000 New Yorkers with nobility disabilities, it basically means they have a smaller city.
For example if they want to travel along central park they can't use eight of the nine stations that are along that park and they can't travel to Citifield for the game.
Not surprisingly it's worse in poverty neighborhoods.
The distance between the accessible stations can exceed 30 blocks and several miles on subway lines. There's gaps of 10 or more in certain neighborhoods. A 2018 report by the New York City comptroller who is running for mayor identified so called ADA transit deserts. 62 of 122 New York neighborhoods identified in his study don't have a single accessible subway station.
In those 62 neighborhoods, there are 242,000 New Yorkers with mobility disabilities. 341,000 seniors above the age of 65. So how do those people get around? Well the first answer is more slowly. And with the understanding that your life is going to be dictated by accessibility, the location of subway elevators controls where you live, where you work, what bars you suggest to friends for happy hours, whether you can attend a panel after work that sounds interesting. And because of this frustration, a lot of people basically have given up on the system. Instead of relying on what some locals call stress a ride, the paratransit system, it cost the MTA $614 million in 2019 alone to operate that system, which could buy a lot of elevators. And this exacerbates the problem, right?
The MTA thinks that people with disabilities won't use the system so they don't invest in it. When in reality they're not using a system that wasn't designed for them, so therefore they ride access a ride more and the MTA spends more on access a ride and not investing in elevators and that perpetuates.
REBECCA SERBIN: So just for additional representation of this one side you see the inaccessible MTA subway map. You see a tremendous number of different subway lines and each of those dots is a station and they're densely packed.
And the other map shows what that system looks like if you're only able to use the accessible stations and as Emily was describing, you get to use a real — a totally different scope of a system. And as Emily said, that just sort of affects every facet of life, and it particularly compounds problems that other kinds of accessibility problems in New York City, such as the lack of affordable accessible housing. So for folks who are already limited in finding affordable accessible housing they're even more limited if they want to use the subway so all of these problems stack on top of each other that make New York City to be a pretty inhospitable place to be a person with a mobility disability
EMILY SEELENFREUND: How did the most transit rich city in the country come to offer such a raw deal? When the act was passed in 1973 it became clear for the first time that transportation entities going to be under some obligation to provide access.
So the Department of Transportation after the famous sit ins that forced them to issue those regulations. While that was happening many transportation entities, especially New York City, fought against the idea that this new law required fully accessible transit facilities on any timeline.
So in 1980 the MTA authority's board basically voted to ignore the 504 requirements despite threats from the federal government that the MTA would lose their federal transit assistance.
So what happened was in 1976 a group called disabled in Action and the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association brought a Section 504 lawsuit also alleging violations of the New York State public buildings law challenging the MTA's renovation of subway stations without including accessibility upgrades.
So partially in response to this lawsuit, the state legislator began working on a bill requiring some accessible improvements in New York City transportation and you can see the quote from the mayor. He opposed it vigorously stating I have concluded that it's simply wrong to spend 50 million in the next years and ultimately more in putting elevators in the subways.
So nonetheless the bill passed. This was transportation law 15B. And that transportation law 15B ultimately led to this 1984 settlement of that EPVA lawsuit. And among other things, it required accessibility at 65 named key stations. Later amended to 100. And that key stations was a concept that was also built into the 504 regulations.
So a lot of the transportation entities that did not have fully accessible systems fought back and were basically told you can make some stations accessible and those stations were chosen based on a delineated list of factors and those include the station's popularity, the priority on transfer stations, stations with the end of lines, terminus stations and those serving major activity centers.
And it's important to note that this transportation law 15B and this settlement was a remarkable achievement for the time. It led to a fully accessible bus network, a robust paratransit program, an accessible transportation committee that was formed to continue advocating for accessible transportation options.
But that lawsuit is kind of looked down on a bit disdainfully now. The idea of key stations has become kind of a symbol of how little the MTA has done for access. It's a good example of how settlements that initially start to span rights can contract them. Particularly if they set fixed limits, if they freeze accessibility in time and don't build in ways to continue to add access.
So marching forward we get to the ADA. The ADA codified the key stations concept. It did not require the retrofitting of certain stations for fixed rail public transportation systems, vowing to push back from entities, instead requiring all systems to commit key station plans.
So basically New York City's requirements were gradually expanded because you're allowed to ask for extensions. So New York City has continued to ask for extensions up to 2020, which was the year they were supposed to have their 100 key stations completed. They have ironically not met their goal, although we do not believe it's an actual offense because any remedy would be those stations be made accessible and they are in the works and they are late on that timeline.
Now the ADA did set the floor and said you have to do this minimum and you have to make a certain number of stations accessible, but it's very clear it was not setting a ceiling. It did encourage public entities to go above and beyond. Around 1982, Boston, Chicago and New York had very similar levels of access. I think New York was something like 2% accessible, Boston at 7% and Chicago at 9%.
Today you have Boston and Chicago, also old cities, their systems are both 70% accessible now and they have plans to get to 100%. And they've done that in different ways. Boston did settle a lawsuit that was brought by GBLS. And they, instead of fighting that lawsuit, they worked together with those groups. And basically said we want to do what the law requires and we want to do more. We want to get to full accessibility and we want to create a useable city for folks with mobility disabilities. As you'll see later New York has taken a slightly different tactic in the face of litigation. And Chicago officials have basically said we're going embrace access. They've released a vigorous and robust plan pushing to get to 100% in the next 15 years.
REBECCA SERBIN: So continuing on the ADA, as Emily said, the ADA does not require that a system immediately or on any particular timeline make all of its stations accessible. But in addition to key stations there are applicable requirements. So the first we'll talk about today is the alterations rule.
And there's two parts to the alterations rule. One part of which is not super relevant in the context of elevators. And that is if the transit entity does an alteration to what's called a primary function area, so an example of that in a subway station would be the platform where you're waiting for the train. Then the transit entity has to make that part of the station accessible, as long as doing so isn't disproportionate to the cost of the renovation.
And because of the cost of elevators compared to the cost of these renovations, it's very unlikely, in a typical situation, that that disproportionate cost would become a problem. So the part of the alterations rule that is more relevant to elevators, which is copied here on the PowerPoint, is that when an entity alters an existing facility in a way that impacts the usability of a facility or part of it, the entity has to make the alterations in a manner that are accessible to the maximum extent feasible, so that the altered portions of the facility are readily accessible to and useable by individuals with disabilities, including individuals who use wheelchairs.
To break that down a little, if the alteration is significant enough that it affects the usability of the station, so that's sort of your factor one; then the entity has to make that altered area accessible, unless it would be technically infeasible. But the technical infeasibility is a separate requirement from cost. Even if it is feasible to do that, to make that part of the station accessible, it doesn't matter what the cost of doing that is, compared to the cost of the rest of the alteration.
The idea behind this scheme is that it sort of accepts that you might have a transit system that doesn't have a lot of resources. And so they have sort of a baseline of accessibility obligations. But once the train system shows that they have the resources to be doing these big alterations, then they need to be using those alterations to make the system more accessible over time. So we will be circling back to what that looks like in just a moment.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: And so one of the other requirements is the maintenance of accessible features. The ADA's federal regulations, public entities shall require that the elevators that do exist are aptly maintained entities providing transportation services must maintain those features of facilities that are required to make facilities readily accessible in, quote, operative condition.
They did not prescribe a set percentage of what it required. And in our case which we'll talk about a bit later in terms of the MTA maintaining their elevators, they took the view that it was nonbinding and all they had to do was provide programmatic access. We do not accept this interpretation of the regulations but we did try to concurrently argue that the MTA maintain their features their failure to follow this regulation was probative efforts was failure — that was how we tried to straddle those two lines while giving credit to the regulations while also arguing for a vigorous interpretation of the programmatic access standard.
REBECCA SERBIN: Going back to the overall ADA requirements. They have to make key stations accessible, they have to make stations accessible when the public entity chooses to renovate and the degree varies with the degree of renovation and they have to maintain the features already in the system, such as elevators and escalators and provide the baseline Title II requirements to program and services that they offer.
So when you have those as the requirements, what do you do if a station is not accessible today, so there's no elevator or escalator to be maintaining, and it hasn't been renovated, and it's not a key station? Because then it would seem in that situation that it potentially falls through the cracks of these ADA requirements.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: So that leads us to another legal hook, which is a local law, the New York City human rights law. In that situation we have stations that are not accessible that are not covered under key stations, that are not going to be renovated, we do not think that those stations were meant to be frozen in time as inaccessible. And neither do a bunch of activists.
And the accessibility of the subway has always been — and accessibility in New York City in general has always been bolstered by a groundswell of activists. But in 2016 there began to be a particular focus on this. One activist started working with a direct-action group that's part of Rise and Resist. They're called the Elevator Action Group and they began protesting at stations.
But they also began thinking about how to attack it on a more systemic bases. And they approached DRA seeking a systemic remedy. The problem was very clear the ADA did not require retroactive accessibility at all stations and key stations was sufficient. So instead we begin to focus on another legal hook and that's the New York City human rights law.
Which is a local law, but a very robust one that goes above and beyond the ADA and other federal antidiscrimination laws in a variety of contexts. So New York City admin code 8 1074a states it shall be an unlawful discriminatory practice for any person, being the owner, lessee, proprietor, manager, superintendent, agent or employee of any place or provider of public accommodation because of the actual or perceived disability status of any person directly or indirectly to refuse, withhold from any or deny to such person any of the accommodations advantages facilities or privileges thereof. A wordy text. It also states that people with disabilities must be provided equal access on equal terms and conditions to public facilities unless doing so would be an undue hardship. That's the only affirmative defense.
There's no programmatic access profession that allows for large accessibility gaps so long as there is access to a program as a whole. There's no access mandates by renovating a few key stations. This is a robust law but it's also an undeveloped law. There have not been a ton of systemic class action lawsuits litigated under the New York City human rights law, and definitely not within the disability context. So we definitely went out on a limb here with this.
REBECCA SERBIN: So the first of the subway cases that we filed, and as Emily said, theory started doing work —first one of our cases in 2016 but the work was building on decades of advocacy that was being done by activists in New York City and on those earlier cases.
So the Bronx independent living services against MTA was filed in 2016 and this was a case about a renovation. So going back to where we were talking about that accessibility alterations rule, the idea that MTA does a big enough renovation that it affects usability, the MTA has to make the altered portion of the station accessible, including folks who use wheelchairs — unless doing so would be infeasible.
One of the MTA's signature moves is that they renovate stations regularly without making the stations accessible. Some of the time they claim that these renovations are just cosmetic. Sometimes they literally put art into the stations, which we don't oppose the art. But they also regularly put in huge sums of money, and don't make the station any more accessible than it was when they started.
So the middle town road station, which is a subway station in the Bronx, was an example of that. They closed the station to the public for seven months. They took out all the staircases and put in entirely new staircases, they did work to the mezzanine, to the platform. They totally reshaped the station and they didn't make the station any more accessible other than arguably making the stairs that they put in sort of more — the stairs themselves were more ADA complaint.
But they didn't provide vertical access to folks who could not use stairs. So we brought a test case of this alterations rule to challenge that. And this builds on some work that had been done by folks in Philadelphia on the SEPTA subway system there. Sort of trying to get to the question of if you replace a staircase, does that trigger the need to provide vertical access.
And so the transit agency's argument tends to be, the MTA's argument in our case is, that if you replace the stairs, that means you just have to make the stairs accessible. They have to have railings, they have to be even. But it doesn't mean you have to put in an elevator. But the reason that this interpretation cannot be correct, is that the whole idea of the alterations, part of the ADA, is that the system is going to become more accessible over time.
So if doing a being renovation including if the path of travel to the station, doesn't trigger the need to put in elevators, then there would be no renovation that would trigger the need to put in elevators, so you wouldn't see the system get better over time. In this interpretation that was used in Philadelphia of replacing the stairs, means you've altered the path of travel so you have to make the path of travel accessible, was something that the federal transportation authority codified described in an FTA circular. So the MTA did this big renovation at Middletown road, shut down the station, went to the FTA to get federal fund to go pay for the renovation and the FTA said sorry, your renovation triggered the alteration rule and unless you can show that it was technically infeasible, which is the one defense you would have to doing that, you're not going to get your federal funding. So they went back and forth and it was never resolved.
And we filed suit in 2016 on behalf of two local organizations and a couple of individual clients in the Bronx. And we're arguing that the scope of the renovation triggered the need to make the system accessible.
We filed a first partial motion for summary judgment on the whether or not the scope of the renovation triggered the rule to make it accessible. We won that motion and the only remaining issue in the case is whether or not the MTA has the defense that it was technically infeasible for them to make the station accessible.
And as mentioned before, that can't just mean that it was expensive. The statute does not define technically infeasible in a particularly precise way, but what it clearly doesn't mean is just that it's costly. Again, sort of based on the idea that this is only being triggered when you're doing a big renovation anyway. So it's fair to put on a big accessibility obligation on to the transit authority.
So we briefed that second motion and it is now fully briefed and we expect to get an order any day now on that. And the technical feasibility argument — the MTA is sort of making a very specific technical feasibility argument suggesting that the only — the only renovation that would not be technically infeasible is that if all of the same structural beams that were moved as part of the renovation would be the same beams that you would move to put in the elevator. Sort of this extremely narrow interpretation. And we're suggesting that that interpretation is in no way supported by the statute. And so that is the current state of that case.
But then because, as mentioned, the MTA does renovations in far more stations than just Middletown Road, we wanted to build on that initial victory. Trigger the alterations rule. So we filed a second related case on that.
You were going to do this one, Emily?
EMILY SEELENFREUND: I think this one is yours.
REBECCA SERBIN: So then in the Forsee case, we built on the work we had been in BILS by looking at this whole variety of stations where they have this pattern of closing stations for months at a time, conducting these major renovations without providing vertical access.
And so the judge in BILS in the southern district of New York accepted the case as a related case and the defendants filed a successful 12c motion for judgment on the pleadings on the basis that our claims are barred with respect to the stations are renovated before the three year statute of limitations.
That narrowed the case somewhat, however the MTA does the renovations all the time and plaintiffs are proceeding with discovery based on a short list of exemplar stations.
So I'm going to talk about twin cases. In April 2017, DRA, on behalf of six disability rights organizations, so a coalition of independent living centers and disability in action was also involved in that original 1979 lawsuit and settlement against the MTA, so kind of the OG accessibility advocates in New York City, as well as three wheelchair users, and one of those wheelchair users is actually the individual who has been very involved in that direct action group, who first approached DRA about using litigation to address the New York City subway system. The first lawsuit in federal court we call it CIDNY federal. It attempted to use the ADA to challenge the accessibility, but it did it through the lens of elevator maintenance, the failure to maintain the limited number of elevators that do exist in the subway system.
And it was also concurrent with CIDNY state. To allege that the MTA discriminates against plaintiffs by operating a system that is less than 25% accessible.
So the first of those lawsuits is the elevator maintenance lawsuit. And what's interesting about this case is the overarching statistic in this case has basically been uncontested since the complaint was filed. Both sides basically degree that New York City subway elevators are unavailable due to planned maintenance or unexpected breakdowns roughly 3.5% of the time.
So I talk about this case a lot with people and when I explain it to them and I say the MTA has a A grade on elevators that are available 96% of the time. They don't understand what the issue is. When I grass graduating law school and this case was filed as I was graduating and I was reading about this case and I was preparing to move to New York City, and I also was a bit confused why we were concerned about a small amount of mechanical down time.
After all, all mechanical equipment has down time, cars, wheelchairs, prosthetics. They all need repair. I have a friend who lives in Astoria and I have not been able to visit her ever, because that entire neighborhood does not have an accessible subway station. Although it just got one a few weeks ago.
But the importance of maintaining accessible features was actually something the ADA drafters contemplated and if you look at the legislative history it talks about if transit is not something that can be relied on to get us where we need to go day in and day out, it might as well not be an option at all.
It makes since if you think about it. It's going to have limited options but you do plan your life around those limited options so you figure out a commute, an apartment that works based on what stations do have elevators. If those options routinely fail, the systems might be worthless. For transit to be effective it has to be consistent.
If you have a court conference at 9:00 a.m. or a parent teacher conference at 2 driver's license 30, you have to believe that the train will get you the vast majority of the time, otherwise you're not going to take the train and you're going to rely on another option like paratransit.
Interestingly they valued maintaining features but the ADA drafters also did not prescribe a specific percentage of elevator up time. They did not say to comply with the ADA elevators have to be available 90% of the time. We argue that is by design. In fact the 7th circuit in evaluating a elevator maintenance claim stated there are no universal definitions in the regulations for what is required to maintain an operative condition.
Any claims involving those obligations can be settled only by considering the unique circumstances of the system itself. And that makes sense. Because an outage in a 100% accessible system versus a 25% accessible system or an outage scheduled two weeks in advance taking place at 11:00 at night, versus an elevator going out at 5:00 p.m. at rush hour without any warning, is going to have different impact.
So here are some of the MTA's unique circumstances. So the vast majority of trips on the MTA system require four elevators to travel one way. Eight elevators for round trip. That's because you need one elevator to get from the street to the mezzanine and one to get from the mezzanine to the platform. And that doesn't account for a trip transfer which is common in a city as vast as the New York City subway.
It could total 6 elevators one way or 12 for a round trip. To give you context, my commute to work for several years, back when that was a thing, actually involved taking the 123 from Penn Station to Times Square and transferring from the 7 at Times Square to grand central and that was 6 elevators. I quickly learned that it's faster and less frustrating to push a mile to work in all but the most horrific of weather.
So another unique circumstance is that the MTA has overwhelming inaccessibility to begin with. Obviously the MTA's rash for keeping their elevators in good repair is particularly cruel because any one outage to begin with would be mean you might be stuck traveling hours to get to the next accessible station. You can literally be trapped underground.
The ADA does say you have to provide programmatic access and you can do that in a variety of ways. And one way you could do it is by building more elevators. So there is just more access, full stop. But if you're going to have elevators you're going to under-invest in amount of elevator you have to over-invest in maintaining those elevators otherwise you are not full filling your duties.
Can people with a disabilities act will as a practical matter use the service to which they are entitled. Another unique MTA circumstance, there is almost no redundant elevators. That means two elevators that travel along the same path of travel. So you have two elevators going to the same place one breaks no big deal you cross the street get on the next one.
Interestingly enough, as other systems leap and surpass the MTA, other systems you see in Boston have begun to commit to including redundancy, New York City has nearly no redundancy. And the last factor is that in the MTA system, 80% of outages are the result of unplanned breakdown as opposed to planned maintenance. And that's because the MTA is not investing in maintaining these machines.
Partially they just don't have enough individuals to fix these machines. They have always had a longstanding problem with maintainer vacancies. We learned in discovery that they had roughly 30 maintainer vacancies while we were going through discovery. And that is borne out by a comptroller report by our friend Scott stringer, he has done good work in the accessibility space and he found that around 4/5 of machines were not getting all their scheduled preventative maintenance and that's maintenance that those machines need to be maintained in a state of good repair to not break down all of a sudden.
REBECCA SERBIN: A quick additional note on the lack of redundant elevator is one opposite of a fun fact about the system is the MTA understands the redundant elevators are essential. So there are a few stations in the system that because of the topography of New York City are so far underground that the number of stairs that one would have to climb to take it are sort of not reasonable for anyone to be expected to do.
So everybody who uses those stations typically is using elevators. And in those stations where everyone is relying on elevators — acknowledge it would be catastrophic to have an — if you only had one elevator and it broke down and you couldn't use the station, that would be a real problem which ignores that that is indeed the circumstance that folks who rely on the accessibility elevators are dealing with regularly.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: If anyone has questions, to stop for a moment I'm happy to take questions or comments or annoying New York City subway stories. I see a raised hand from Steve? Please go ahead. Or feel free to type in the chat if that's easier.
Hello? Can you hear me?
EMILY SEELENFREUND: Yes.
This is Steve a former New Yorker born and bred and watched these issues develop over the years. New York City using — not only in the transit context but in the special education context and other context too. They've written the book on how it's cheaper to litigate than to comply.
I was wondering two things in particular, I'm glad you mentioned the stations that are accessible for everybody. I'm wondering about A whether or not you think the possibility of seeking an injunction with respect to forthcoming modifications, and secondly how the local law has ultimately played into the litigation.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: Can you repeat the last piece? I heard the last piece about injunctions.
How the New York City human rights law plays into the litigation or how it will.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: That is coming up. To be continued, yes. We did utilize the New York City human rights law piece. And the injunction is a great point. We did consider it. But not at this time. We are spending a lot of our time litigating against the MTA. But it is an interesting tool.
Thank you. Good luck.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: Thanks.
So basically I just kind of talked about all these unique circumstances that means because of long standing outages the MTA is not providing meaningful access. The issue was how to show this to a judge. Who to get anyone to see beyond the 96% up time number and say that's good. We did hire a bench of experts to show a judge that just because your elevators are available 96.5% of the time doesn't mean class members can get to where they need to go 96.5% of the time. So one of our experts, he designed a statistical study where he took the ten most popular Manhattan stations and ten of the most popular stations in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx and he came up with basically 200 hypothetical trips. And he did an analysis to determine how often a daily commuter over the course of a year would encounter a failed trip.
And he used the MTA's own data so he took that as true. And his analysis suggested that someone commuting during rush hour daily would encounter an inoperable elevator ending their trip 8% to 15% of the time. And I think if you've ever seen a New Yorker get to their subway station and learn that it's bypassing the station the next day and they're going have to walk 10 blocks, you know they would not accept that happening 8% to 15% of the time.
So we think it's pretty clear that it's not meaningful access to the system. But in response to this, the MAT's rebuttal expert looked at this analysis and said you know, that's no big deal. For example, look at this failed trip. It's not actually a failed trip because if the elevator is out at Herald Square you can go to Times Square and that should be a successful trip. And if you've ever done that walk you know it's not pleasant and it's not something that most folks want to do on the regular and it's not meaningful access in our mind. And basically ignores the everyday realities of what commuting looks like and what access the system as a practical matter looks like. Both parties committed summary judgment motions, with all this evidence. And in April 2020, as if that month wasn't heart enough, the district court denied our motion for summary judgment and granted the MTA's, hold thanking we did not establish the denial of meaningful access to the system.
This is wrong for a variety of reasons. One it ignored hundreds of exhibits of factual evidence that plaintiffs had submitted and in many cases it flat out got the record incorrect. For example it compared our case to a case Kupulo versus bay area rapid transit. In that case they charged the BART elevator up time and our district court stated we had not submitted evidence of severe dysfunction.
It's just not true. It's just wrong if you look at the actual record. In BART they submitted evidence of .18 daily average entrapments. We submitted evidence of an average of 1.71. Which means there was an over 1.5 customers a day getting trapped in an MTA elevator. But to say we didn't submit evidence of severe dysfunction including entrapments gets the record wrong.
He also basically said we relied too heavily on class member testimony. So it is not true that we rely solely on class member testimony as he alleges, but it is true we did rely on their testimony. We submitted the declarations of nine, and we find it troubling that class member testimony can be nod be used to show the denial of meaningful access.
As I've said a bunch of times. It means whether as a practical meeting class members can access the system to which they're entitled and testimony kind of confirming the sorts of barriers that folks face we think is part and parcel of that and has been and should be used in denial of meaningful access cases because in the end of the day, they show something that can't prove alone, that's what it's like to use the system with a disability.
So the other confusing thing in this decision is he basically said the ADA does not prescribe a certain percentage of numerical uptime. And so basically he said the contextual evidence we submitted is not really relevant. And we find this kind of puzzling. And troubling. Because basically they didn't prescribe uptime for a reason, this is a contextual fact driven inquiry. So our contextual fact driven evidence has to be relevant. And if there is no numerical standard, so basically — and we can't introduce our contextual evidence, it kind of begs to be seen what could be used to show that the class doesn't have meaningful access here. And so that decision has been appealed to the second circuit and we think it's a really important decision for the meaningful access standard. We think a lot of things lie in the balance of that, specifically whether class member has — whether contextual evidence can be used.
And what we tried to do with that brief even more than we tried to do in the underlying summary judgment briefing was tying the entity's deficient maintenance practices and explaining why as a practical matter that meant you could not have meaningful access to the system. And we tried to also focus that the MTA has a uniquely deficient system. In that it is the least accessible system in percentage of accessible stations by ordinary of magnitude.
Which means their burden to maintain elevators is higher than most entities. Those elevators must work because otherwise the system as a whole is definitely unusable.
That argument is fully briefed.
One from transit center, which is a transit advocacy group in New York City that has done a lot of focus on the accessibility of the MTA including their access denied campaign and one from up stand which is a parent group advocating for a more accessible subway due to difficulties traveling with strollers and kids. And their interest in the issue has some underpinnings which is a New York City mother, she fell to her death while attempt to go carry her 2 year old down the subway stairs. It goes to show you this issue impacts so many New Yorkers, the folks to have a legal right to the subway are those with mobility disabilities but there are millions of people who could benefit, that is parents, folks with luggage, seniors. And that is pretty much everyone, some of these stations are quite deep underground.
You see folks on the elevators all the time. This issue is fully briefed and we are awaiting an oral argument date from the second circuit.
REBECCA SERBIN: Before we move on, a couple of Dispatches from the chat. Howard, thank you for pointing out that the Chicago transit authority was also sued. And a question from Pat. The New York City transit agency offers paratransit services to disabled persons. To what extent if any does the unwillingness of the MTA to upgrade the stations stem from the availability of that service in.
Have they offered that as a defense in any of your suits?
EMILY SEELENFREUND: That is a great question. So I think I touched on this a bit before. But is widely used in New York City. And a decent amount of that is because it's folks who would use the subway but cannot. I can't remember off the top of my head but there are a substantial number of paratransit trips that start and or stop within half a mile of an inaccessible subway station.
And the MTA did try to focus on their paratransit network. So meaningful access is can you access the program as a whole. And we try to say the program is a subway system. The subway is a separate program. Ask any New Yorker, the bus is a separate program. The subway provides its own benefits, it provides rapid underground transit that is not subject to surface conditions like rain and snow, it is not subject to traffic.
And the MTA tried to say no, no. The program is just getting around New York City. So you need to look at whether folks can actually get around New York City. We do not think that paratransit as it currently operates in New York City allows folks to meaningfully get around New York City but we push back very hard against this idea that program access is that broad. And we think in general it benefits all people with disabilities to narrowly define the program rather than broadly.
REBECCA SERBIN: I would also add that certainly paratransit is necessary even if tomorrow every station in New York City was fully vertically accessible, there would still be a need for paratransit. But it doesn't excuse the inaccessible stations. And Rick asked if the April 2020 summary judgment decision was in state or federal court and yes we will get to that.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: Hopefully the second circuit is overturning it soon. We shall see.
So now, the last of our big lawsuits against the MTA. This is our state lawsuit filed in state court and utilizing the human rights law. And basically what it alleged was that the MTA's failure to install elevators in stations throughout the city violated that law because the New York City human rights law disallows discrimination and we are seeking the plan to make it accessible.
So immediately upon filing this, defendants, the MTA as well as the city of New York, filed a motion to dismiss on four grounds, those are preemption, justiciability, statute of limitations and lack of control and the last one was argued by New York City who says we've washed our hands of the MTA.
The main crux of the argument what we've focused most of the weight on was preemption. And that really mostly to our old friend state law transportation 15B, which was the result of that initial lawsuit in 1976 by Disability in Action and the EPVA. And basically they said that state law it tended to occupy the field of subway accessibility by creating a comprehensive scheme for an accessible New York City for travel.
And also conflict preemption. Mainly that because the state law required only a hundred key stations, local law could not require more. It would be in conflict. I want to give a shout out to my former co worker she argued this extremely persuasively in state court. And what she argued was that key stations was meant to be a floor and not a ceiling.
And that the state law and the ADA as well set the floor, but there's no reason that the local law could not require more. And that if we allowed this state law to kind of be the end all/be all for accessibility, that would basically freeze accessibility in time at 25%. And I think we were held to the fact that we actually argued this motion in 2019. Which was actually the year key stations were set to be completed. So it was pretty compelling to say if the state law is this, then basically the MTA is forever frozen in time in terms of their legal obligations to access. So our state court judge actually denied the defendant's motion on all front and they have a great quote. There is no license by the MTA, by any other agency, to discriminate against any individual by race, minority, ethnicity, or disability. He agreed with our logic that the state law was a floor and not a ceiling.
And that was a great decision and we think it gave a lot of power to this local law. Which we feel really good about. And so after we got that decision, the MTA actually fired its in house team and hired a private law firm, Paul Weiss and they began litigating this case earn evidently with a variety of —
Having antagonistic meet and defers, delaying and delaying seeing the writing on the wall and trying to put off the inevitable. This is a case that could and should settle. The New York City human rights law is really clear. You cannot discriminate against people with disabilities in places of public accommodation. Yes, if you have an undue hardship defense that has to be taken on a system wide level given we are seeking to make the system accessible over a set period of time, we do not think it would be a undue hardship to do that. However the obstructionist tactics have made it impossible to engage in good faith settlement discussions. And meanwhile they appealed the decision to the intermediate appellate court in New York City, who affirmed the lower court's ruling on a motion to dismiss.
And we submitted our motion for classification, which the MTA said they were going to oppose. So they took class discovery, they took the depositions of some of our folks and predictably when we filed the motion, this was about as much of a slam dunk as you can get considering the New Yorkers with disabilities. They did not oppose that motion.
So February 21, 2021, the case was certified as a class action. And we are still litigating it. So we shall see what happens.
REBECCA SERBIN: Maia?
I just wanted to say thank you for the shout out, but I really don't deserve it. I was a very small cog in the wheel. But I did want to add that I thought it was — this case was so exciting because it showed the way that you could use this local law, this New York City Human Rights Law to get around a loophole. And when you think about the possibilities in technology and housing, there are all of these places where people have said we're safe here, we don't have to we don't have to do inclusion, we don't have to do universal design here because of this ADA loophole. And in fact here's this local law that advocates like you guys have used creatively.
I did have a quick question, which was does this mean they didn't appeal that first department to the court of appeals?
EMILY SEELENFREUND: They did not. We were pretty surprised. Based on a decision standing there not appealing it to the highest court in New York. So we got two good decisions and I guess they're going to let it lie. So the New York City human rights law is not preempted by a state law and you're absolutely right. Local laws often go above and beyond state and federal law, and this has been a great tool for us.
We often plead New York City human rights law claims as an add on or a throw away and often courts don't bother to reach them. But I think this has been a lesson for DRA and how we can use local laws creatively to continue expanding access in ways in which federal law is not there yet.
REBECCA SERBIN: Then to talk about one last case, slightly different type of case relating to subway access. So in 2018, the MTA named a new president a fellow named Andy Biford who previously run the Toronto system. He brought in a different energy how he talked about accessibility and being a priority for the system.
He has unfortunately since —
There was sort of this — and one of his key initiatives was that he wanted them to do a survey where they hired third party firms to survey every inaccessible subway station and determine how they could make each of those stations accessible. And so one kind of recurring theme in dealing with the MTA on these cases is that the MTA mostly talks about this being cost prohibitive and difficult and all these things to make the stations accessible, but some of the times they also talk about the idea that maybe some of the stations are so quirky in their design that it would just be like a whole other order of magnitude difficult to make them accessible. There's a particular station in Wall Street that they claim what about these stations that are so specific that you couldn't make them accessible. This survey seemed like an interesting way to answer how many of those stations are there?
Is it a significant number or is it something they're making up. So it was the first effort of its kind and certainly given as we've talked about, that these cases that we're doing, are not happening at all in a vacuum and are just a piece of this much broader advocacy effort that started long before our part of the effort did. So we thought it was important that these surveys be available to the public. And to advocates.
Of course these are the kind of surveys we would be able to get in litigation discovery under a protective order, but we didn't think that was sufficient. So we filed under New York State's version of the FOIA law, which is FOIL in New York State. And the MTA in addition to not providing accessibility, has a long history being secretive.
Despite being a public agency, they're not responsive to these requests. So they constructively deny our request. So we had done these requests in the past that they hadn't responded to and this time we decided this was so particularly outrageous that we brought a state court proceeding, it's an article 78 proceeding to challenge their decision, and we were able to settle it in January last year so they made the surveys accessible.
And we get requests fairly regularly from journals and academics who are interested in seeing the surveys. If any of you would like to see the surveys, please contact us. The MTA did produce the surveys with some redactions, but the main thing we learned from the surveys is that they could make almost all of these stations accessible, that the idea that there are these stations that are so strange that they would be too hard to make accessible is a tiny, tiny exception to the rule, and in general this is absolutely a thing they can do.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: So I want to talk about some of our factors for success. Which is basically not litigate this in a bubble. In fact it could not have been done without these broader factors. So as I mentioned there has been a long history of activists pushing for more accessible New York. Folks from disabled in action literally parked their wheelchairs in front of New York City buses said if you don't build lift no one is going to be able to get on the bus.
There is this direct action group and they are super dedicated to this and it's amazing. They show up at board meetings every month and they testify day in and day out about how difficult it is to get around the city. They trek out to inaccessible subway stations that have been renovated and noting that it's more difficult to trek out to the stations. They are protesting the fact they do not have a elevator.
The profile has risen tenfold. We need more of these things. It's pretty cool to see it creeping into the public conscious. And it was so an image description for the image on the right, it is a group of folks including a lot of folks in wheelchairs who are standing outside of — standing or sitting outside of courthouse steps and they are holding a variety of signs.
Some of the signs say elevators fail, elevators are for everyone. Stranded by Cuomo who of course is the New York City governor, our New York governor, he's been in the news a time or two lately. But basically these rallies are the rule and not the exception. Pretty much every single time we hit a court conference whether it was for a big ruling or the tiniest little status conference there was a crew of folks chanting and raising awareness and 40 plus people in wheelchairs filing into a woefully inaccessible courthouse. It was clear the judge liked his audience and seeing how many people were dedicated to this issue. They were willing to give up their Tuesday to come out and be heard and be seen. We've had remote conferences over the last year and he's mentioned several times how much he's missed folks. He's been swayed by seeing the people the issue impacts.
And there has also been kind of a growing media and public awareness. There have been — there's kind of a transit beat that has been follow us. And we have gotten press ranging from the local papers to the New York Times. And you know, it really is pretty cool to see kind of folks holding the MTA accountable. It used to be well, there are some folks there are some elevators but wow that would be expensive. But this is a group shedding light how the MTA mismanages funding to shedding light how the MTA's construction cost are ballooning into some amount of yes this would be expensive and that also on the MTA. And kind of basically just taking up the mantle as well. There have been a lot of reports issued on all fast et cetera of accessibility. Two of the comptroller reports, one about the deficient maintenance practices, one about transit deserts as a result of inaccessible stations.
There is a Manhattan borough office, a hunter college to shed light on the idea that no one will use these things. An NYU study of paratransit and the subway and these things have all been key to our work. We're used a lot of these studies and introduced them as evidence in our cases. It's also led to a growing political awareness and political support.
A lot of local politicians have taken up the mantle. We have city assembly members advocating at their local stop. Attending rallies. Some of them are offering money to install elevators in their districts. One local politician introduced a proposal called zoning for accessible transit. The idea being to create
State legislators introduced a bill commitments by the MTA. Cuomo himself wrote a letter to the MTA demanding they do more in terms of access. I think this basically shows you can and should use public opinion and consciousness to further litigation. Everyone knows this but judges are people too. They'll go into court, they'll mention they read something about subway access in the New York Times. They saw the rally outside the courthouse.
We also had dozens of eager class members to submit declarations for class certification for our global New York City human rights law accessible case. Also we could not do this and we could not know as much as we do without folks on the ground. That's how we learn about renovations, it's how we learn about problematic maintenance practices,
It's how we learn about new information. We have politicians calling the MTA to stop fighting and settle. So really our entire effort to put pressure on the MTA could not be done without all these various pressure points. And it's interesting that despite all of this, the MTA has not wanted to kind of embrace our lawsuits and say how can we work together and how can we settle this. They have, because of all this pressure and both inside and outside the courthouse, slowly rolled out a variety of accessibility up grades including hire a systemwide chief of accessibility. They want to do it independent of our lawsuits and independent of our efforts.
REBECCA SERBIN: From the chat, are there allies within the state or city government, straphangers, playing DeBlasio off Cuomo, et cetera? There are certainly allies in sort of the broader transit advocacy community which has been great to see as well as in state and local electeds. And I think in a very nonscientific study I have done of making the mistake always reading the comments, it even feels like in just these past two years, there's been a shift, and just talking to folks in town, in the past there were people who totally understood this issue but many who said isn't that really expensive? Isn't the system really old? Is this a possible thing to do? And I think now there's much more of an understanding as Emily said doing exceptional journalism that a lot of the excuses really don't hold up. So things like the MTA, the subway is an older transit system compared to some other transit systems in the U.S.
But when you compare it to the London system, it's a new system. So none of their excuses hold up upon closer inspection.
Finally we get to a new curve ball with the COVID pandemic. Subway ridership is down dramatically and MTA predicts the new normal will stabilize in 2023 and 2024 and it will be between 80% and 92% of prepandemic levels. Tourism won't be restored until 2024. The MTA is facing an $8 billion deficit through 2024 and initially moved forward with scheduled accessibility projects at the beginning of the pandemic, but its promises that it would make 50 stations accessible in the 2020 25 capital plan and 130 in 2025 2029 are in jeopardy. In addition to ridership being way down, it made a switch during the pandemic to not being a 24 hour system. Because they close for a number of hours to allegedly clean the system. They have recently increased the hours, and there's been some recent press coverage that although the system is dependent on getting aid from the federal government, the system needs riders to return and given the uncertainty how corooferry is going to go, there's a lot of uncertainty about that. So the pandemic has not yet had a concrete effect on our cases or what the MTA is willing to do, but we certainly, given this moment of budget crisis for the MTA, anticipate that's going to be something they are pointing to a lot going forward.
So we have some time for questions or if folks have comments or other things to share. We really appreciate you joining us for this presentation. It would be great to hear from anyone who would like to share.
REBECCA SERBIN: A comment from Pat. The London underground is a very progressive system with great service for blind persons and it is also free for a person who is blind.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: I should have said there could be a host of lawsuits against the MTA and some of those could be focused on those who are blind and or have visual disabilities or folks who are Deaf or hard of hearing. The MTA does not make their announcements are often — you'll be on a train and they'll say this train is skipping the next 7 stops and stopping at X. And so really there has not been an effort to embrace accessibility as a whole, in the way we've seen from other systems. So it's not just focused on elevators. Our lawsuits focus on elevators, but there's a lot of work to be done in the system and I hope we continue to advocate for a truly accessible system, not just in terms of vertical access.
REBECCA SERBIN: And another question. Is the goal of the multiple suits to have every single station be accessible or will DRA accept a certain percentage of stations like one per neighborhood?
EMILY SEELENFREUND: I think what we learned is that key stations kind of serve the moment in time, but that freezing accessibility ultimately — we're looking for progressive accessibility. So we are seeking full access on a set timeline. And that doesn't have to be tomorrow, and obviously it cannot be an undue hardship to do so. So to say that has to be done by 2024 would be an undue hardship, particularly given the financial circumstances now.
But I think we are looking to the future and we're basically saying we don't want to freeze inaccessibility in perpetuity
REBECCA SERBIN: I want to emphasize one of the wildest facts about all of this that a lot of New York City residents don't know and I didn't know until I started working on this. There isn't even a plan to make all the stations accessible. It's not like there's a document where they say in the next 300 years. It's just something that wasn't on the table at all under any timeline.
So certainly no one disagrees this is going to take some time. Some of these stations are quite old, these are significant renovations. It's not going to happen overnight. But it is certainly the goal to have the system be fully accessible, understanding that there might be some very small number of stations where that is not feasible, but that will be a very tiny minority of stations.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: Another comment in the chat what do you think of the claim that many stations could have ramps. A new high-level official at the MTA who is focusing on accessibility.
REBECCA SERBIN: I'm not an engineer but I'm a huge fan of ramps. We have no opposition to the concept of ramping the stations, certainly that would have some real benefits with having lower maintenance obligations. But just given how many flights of stairs underground so many of the stations are, or the stations that are above ground, it feels unclear how many stations could really be successfully ramped.
Although the idea of thinking about if there is room for any kind of creative solutions here, it's certainly a worthy one.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: I think it goes to show you you can't ignore the other provisions of the ADA. How steep the gradient of a ramp can be. For a lot of wheelchair users I happen to know he's athletic he could get by with a gradient that does not meet the standard. But we cannot advocate for a solution that does not ensure access for everyone.
Another wrinkle is that there is some systems, particularly this is common in Washington, DC, have ruled out direct street to platform elevators. That's kind of what it sounds like instead of taking a elevator to the mezzanine and obviously that's attractive from a cost savings perspective. Also in terms of how long it takes you travel through the path of the station that's attractive.
But there's a provision of the ADA that says you have to provide accessibility through the entire path of travel. And obviously the mezzanine is part of that path of travel. So that is a wrinkle and it makes it difficult to advocate for that solution. Although I think many folks in the community do support it. I see two more comments in the chat.
Are there good systems that you can point to that are good comparisons in terms of age and rehabbing aside from those that are not as old and as difficult to rehab to serve as models for New York City.
I'm thinking of the planning of some of the already existing ramps in New York City. There's signs in Times Square that says this ramp is not wheelchair accessible. One of the two biggest comparisons are Boston and Chicago. Again, in 1982 they were — they were 2% accessible, but Boston were 7% and 9%. They started at lines. Those systems are now both at 70% access. Think are I think just as old.
With just as much space constraints, and you know, it just goes to show if someone takes up the mantle of access, whether that's working with folks who have brought a class action lawsuit or taking it on and creating a plan, as Chicago has done, the all stations accessible plan which is a great read, it can be done. Someone has to advocate for this. It's not going to get done in a bubble.
REBECCA SERBIN: No pressure but if anyone has any thoughts or questions, we have a little bit more time.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: I'm going to put my email in the chat in case folks want to connect on this. I'm always happy to talk and I can actually — Rick if you want to email me, I can get you that site. If you have a question?
Out of curiosity. Did anyone ever attempt to figure out how much the MTA has spent on lawyers and litigation over the past 40 years in these matters?
EMILY SEELENFREUND: I'm having a little trouble hearing you. Did you get it?
REBECCA SERBIN: The question was — a timely question. If anyone has made an attempt to figure out what New York City has spent on lawyers to litigate over these last years.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: Yes. In fact so we, DRA on behalf of one of our clients submitted another — our best friend, the freedom of information law requests, seeking the MTA's attorneys' fees spent on six lawsuits litigated, five of those are DRA lawsuits. The MTA initially denied our freedom of information law requests on shaky legal ground, basically saying these were privileged. There is a pretty impressive body of case law saying that attorney’s fees and retainer agreements are not privileged so we submitted an appeal and last week our appeal was granted so the FOIL officer said they do have to release this. In 30 business days we will be getting the amount that the MTA has spent litigating these cases.
Maybe sure to publicize it extensively.
REBECCA SERBIN: Well do. And a great comment from Chris that I very much agree with. I'm betting they would agree immediately 100% accessibility in 300 years, they would get back to you in 100 years and give you a progress report. Very true, Chris.
Maia, did you have another comment or was your hand up from before?
My hand was up from before, I think. But I actually did want to point out, Steven mentioned the 168th Street station. And I don't know if you guys have seen them, but this is a great example of what Rebecca was talking about where if everybody needs an elevator, the MTA understands how important it is.
They recently replaced all of the elevators and there are either three or four redundant elevators in the station, and I can tell you guys they're beautiful, brand new elevators. Which work well.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: A question assuming the rotation of MTA leadership has been a bad thing for the suit, or are you negotiating higher up than that?
REBECCA SERBIN: I think it's definitely — there are some challenges for the fact that this is — that there's a lot of politics happening at the same time as these cases. And as we mentioned before, former MTA president Biford talked a great game about accessibility at minimum and also made some really exciting plans for the future of the system, plans as we mentioned that seemed to potentially — it's unclear of the status of the plans given the pandemic.
So I don't think — having all of that going on has definitely had an impact. But I don't know — Emily would you say it's impacted how the cases are proceeding more specifically?
EMILY SEELENFREUND: I would say that someone could take it upon themselves to settle this lawsuit if they wanted to and kind of no one has. And I think part of the problem is that the way the system is designed it makes it easy for everyone to foist the 8 ball off. The MTA is a state agency, and the state controls a lot of funding. The capital plan that the MTA passes that kind of includes accessibility up grades has to be approved by the review board which has mostly state folks on it. The city is a player, although they have leased this to the MTA. So it basically means someone always has someone else to blame. And also no one kind of wants to take upon a mantle and say hey we should settle these. If a high-level official said we should settle these, it could happen. But I think partial because it's in crisis mode, partially it's not in their DNA and no one official has come and said let's prioritize working with this group of advocates and let's settle this. It hasn't happened yet.
REBECCA SERBIN: We're very much still in the middle of this work and have a long way to go before it translates into elevators for folks. We think in terms of lessons learned so far, there's definitely been — it's been an exciting lesson on thinking about building on how you build on community advocacy and other kinds of work that's ongoing, thinking about when you have a situation like this where you can't just bring a straightforward ADA case saying the ADA means all stations have to be accessible. How you get around that, using things like the city law, I think a lot of folks thought it was an extremely high risk move and haven't stuck the landing on it, but it's been proceeding well because as Emily said there hasn't been a lot of similar litigation under that statute. It's really hard to tell at that time to be able to take risks and litigate more creatively than sometimes necessary.
But it's been, as we talked about at the beginning, I haven't worked on very many things as a disability rights lawyer that affected me as the disabled person every day, so it's been an interesting dynamic to get to work on that. And our clients in these cases are incredible advocates and have taught us so much about giving us that more historical perspective on all the advocacy that happened before we filed the cases, and also many of them are extremely savvy folks, in terms of understanding the dynamics of the poll six and the agencies and different things going on here. So they have been major — a major part of all this.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: I think it's kind of interesting for me to work on these lawsuits because I moved to New York when I began as a fellow at DRA and began to work on these suits immediately. And I had somewhat of a privileged life as a disabled person without huge systemic barriers and moving to New York — it really was nearly impossible to get around the city and I have a lot of economic privilege that a lot of folks don't have.
But even still it was kind of eye opening. This is a huge issue and the fact that folks have been dealing with it for 40 plus years, it's made me grateful for the folks who fought for the initial lawsuit and settlement and it was nice in some ways, I think every single New Yorker with a mobility disability, you can't not be frustrated with how limited your options are. So to be able to go into work and do something about it was pretty cool and still is pretty cool.
Thank you guys so much for coming. I don't know if there's any last questions.
REBECCA SERBIN: We both put our emails in the chat. Please feel free if any questions pop up or if we can help point you to some of the orders of things we talked about today. And we appreciate you joining us. And being interested in this issue.
We'll stick around for a few more minutes if other questions pop up, but otherwise we hope you have a lovely evening.
EMILY SEELENFREUND: And thank you so much to the interpreters and the captioners. You guys are great.
One quick question for you. The ability to copy and paste from the chat seems not to be working for me right now. Do you have a website that would be a good reference to get back in touch with you in the future?
Our website is DRAlegal.org and I had put our emails in the chat but I can say them orally.