US Sup Ct holds that cruise ships are public accomodations subject to ADA

In Spector v Norwegian (decided last month), the US Sup Ct held that cruise ships are public accomodations and that the ADA is generally applicable to foreign flag ships that cruise in American waters. There are some limitations on the application of the ADA´s provisions, to wit, ADA mandates that would interfere with overall ship safety will not be enforced.

In addition to the obvious impact this will have on cruise ship facilities, one wonders whether differential pricing that favors customers of one residence/country over another will run afoul of the federal law that prohibits discrimination in public accomodations based national origin.

This is old news....the decision was made weeks ago and discussed here at length.

Sorry Splinter,

I didnt see the ealier thread.

This is old news....the decision was made weeks ago and discussed here at length.

It was? On this board?

Maybe you could provide a link?

It's been discussed in several threads, but here's a link to the main one:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=187858

Candy

Thanks for the link.

That thread was here was more than a month ago, and I must have missed it. It didn't go very far. Certainly it was not discussed "at length" given the few posts on the thread.

There is no harm in discussing things that have been discussed before. Otherwise, most of the boards here wouldn't have many threads!

[Kids in diapers in pool, smoking, chair hogs, dress codes, smuggling alcohol, etc.]

Also, this topic is not dead at all --> it still has to be determined just how much of the ADA the cruise lines will have to follow.

Yes OW, I agree this is far from over. The Supreme Court decision is just the start -- they still are in the process of developing new ADAAG for passenger vessels, not to mention the disposition of this case by the lower court.

We discussed it in another thread (not the one I listed the link to), but I can't find that one -- it was titled something else and the conversation drifted.

To be fair, everything cruise lines have done up to this point in regards to access has pretty much been voluntary, and market-driven. So I think they should be commended for that. It's pretty confusing when you have no access standards, so the cruise lines pretty much have had to guess at access features. I think the ADAAG Passenger Vessel Guidelines will help clarify this for everybody. In the long run, those will be more important than this Supreme Court decision.

Candy