A federal judge has ruled in favor of advocates seeking to force the city of Chicago to install potentially costly new equipment to upgrade street crossings to increase safety for pedestrians with limited vision.
The legal action dates back to 2019, when the American Council for the Blind of Metropolitan Chicago sued the city in federal court, alleging discrimination against blind residents and visitors by not installing accessible pedestrian signals, which emit sounds and vibrate a tactile button, enabling pedestrians to hear the status of the Walk and Don’t Walk signs to know whether it may be safe to cross the street.
According to the 2019 complaint, only 11 out of 2,2672 signalized intersections in the city included such APS devices. The city’s 2012 public pedestrian plan, which cited a primary goal of eliminating pedestrian fatalities by 2022, included intent to install APS devices at every new traffic signal starting in 2016. By 2019, only one of 39 crossings with new signals was APS equipped.
In March 2022, U.S. District Judge Elaine Bucklo certified a class action the American Council for the Blind said could include up to 60,000 residents. The U.S. Department of Justice, as an Americans with Disabilities Act enforcement agency, intervened on behalf of the Council. On March 31, Bucklo issued an opinion on several motions for summary judgement.
Bucklo said there is no debate on whether the class properly includes people with a disability or the city’s ability to be sued as a recipient of federal funds. The remaining clash is “the threshold question of whether the city’s network of pedestrian signals amounts to a public service or program,” Bucklo wrote.
Several existing decisions support the position the ADA’s Title II broadly applies to public entities, Bucklo wrote, but the city insisted that although its pedestrian signals are facilities, the entire network shouldn’t be considered a service or program. As such, the city argued, the plaintiffs would have to show the absence of an APS prevented access to another municipal offering.
“The city’s dichotomic view does not survive scrutiny on the facts here,” Bucklo wrote. “Indeed, as the United States observes, the city fails to explain how its thousands of traffic signals could exist and function without being part of a city program or service — a point the city tacitly emphasizes by situating APS installation within its ‘traffic signal modernization programs.’ ”
Bucklo pointed to similar litigation in which the American Council for the Blind’s New York chapter successfully argued that city fell short of its ADA obligations and called it “a short leap to conclude” the same is true in Chicago. Although the government and original plaintiffs advanced somewhat different legal theories, both hinged on the concept of “meaningful access” to public benefits under the federal Rehabilitation Act.
“While the parties split hairs over whether it is 20, 26 or 30 of the City’s roughly 2,800 signalized intersections that are equipped with APS, none of these numbers represents more than a miniscule portion of the whole,” Bucklo wrote. “Nor does evidence that plaintiffs and the class declarants have developed ‘workarounds and alternate means of traversing the city’s pedestrian crossings,’ or that they have ‘summoned the fortitude to cross busy sections in spite of the risks presented’ ” establish meaningful access, she added.
The city further argued there is no federal requirement for APS at signalized intersections, but Bucklo said the absence of such a rule doesn’t absolve the city of a duty to provide access to its sidewalks and street crossings.
The government argued the city violated the ADA and Rehabilitation Act every time it installed or replaced a signal without incorporating an APS. The Council said failure to upgrade existing signals with APS also makes the city liable. The city, Bucklo wrote, “does not explain how its failure to furnish appropriate modifications to the overwhelming majority of its traffic signals in the form of APS satisfies its affirmative duty make its network of traffic signals meaningful accessible.”
In addressing the city’s cross-motion for summary judgment, Bucklo said the only way in which the city has a winning argument is “a narrow application of the statute of limitations.” She said the city relied mainly on stated projections for future APS installations, but noted “if the undisputed record establishes anything, it is that the City’s plans in this area have not come to fruition” and said the case should be judged on “past and present failure.”
The city opposed the DOJ’s request for an injunction forcing the city to install APS at every signalized intersection, saying that would constitute improper imposition of a federal rule, but Bucklo said it is merely appropriate relief to remedy violations of federal laws.
Regarding statutory limitations, the city invoked a state law it said should bar all claims linked to activity predating Sept. 23, 2017. Although the government alleged it only learned the facts of the case when the council sued in 2019, Bucklo said the DOJ undercut its own position by reliance on the 2012 Pedestrian Plan, writing that “the very scarcity of APS that the government decries in this action was conspicuous evidence of the city’s failure to provide meaningful access to its traffic signaling network to blind pedestrians long before plaintiffs filed this action.”
As such, she continued, the government’s request for compensatory damages would be limited. But the pursuit of an injunction isn’t time barred, she said, as both the Council and DOJ claim the city perpetually and concurrently fails to provide a meaningful accommodation.
The judge's decision does not specify what kind of relief the judge may ultimately order the city to furnish or pay as a result of the decision finding the city liable under the federal non-discrimination laws.
The Council and class are represented by attorneys Nigel F. Telman, Edward Chester Young and Holly Renae Morris, of the firm of Proskauer Rose, of Chicago; and Christina Brandt-Young and Jelena Kolic, of Disability Rights Advocates, of New York and Chicago.
The city is represented by attorneys Andrew S. Mine and Peter Hardt Cavanaugh, of the city’s Department of Law, and John C. Hansberry, Matthew Scot Payne, Laura Elizabeth Caplin and Nathan J. Marketich, of Fox Rothschild, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.