Taco Bell found in violation of disability laws

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal judge has ruled that Taco Bell violated federal and California laws protecting the disabled from discrimination.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland is now deciding what improvements the company must make to the 220 stores it owns in California and how much to fine the fast-food chain.

Hamilton ruled Wednesday after presiding over a weeklong trial in June that examined one store in San Pablo, which is being used as an example of all the company-owned California locations. Hamilton says the San Pablo store failed to provide proper handicap parking, wheelchair access and other accommodations for the disabled.

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Help me out here. It appears that Taco Bell must spend x amount of $ to provide accommodations for the handicapped, regardless of whether Taco Bell wants their business or not, and regardless of whether there might be one or one thousand potential handicapped customers for all of the Taco Bell stores in California.

Does this really make any sense?

It doesn't seem to me like a big thing that someone is not able to readily access the fine cousine available at Taco Bell.

Assuming that they closed at 1:00 AM, and I got off work at 1:10 AM, and thus was not able to enjoy their fine cousine, would I also have a justifiable suit for discrimination?

On the surface it occurs to me that if you find yourself at a local Taco Smell "restaurant" you probably drove there or someone else drove you there in a personally owned vehicle. There is this thing called the drive through window that seems like a good option to me if you can't easily get in and out of a vehicle. Plenty of able bodied people choose that option every day.

I'm no expert on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) but I do know that if a disabled person asks to be accommodated business owners and employers are obligated to find a way to accommodate disabled people. I'm not entirely against the ADA, it makes sense to me to design buildings so disabled people can get in and out of them and access areas that they need to inside the building. On the other hand if you look at building codes from the 1960's and 1970's there wasn't much consideration given to disabled people, older buildings are likely to be non-compliant with the ADA.

I would like to think that corporations the size of YUM would see this kind of lawsuit coming and work with their franchise owners to become ADA compliant before they got sued for not doing so. Apparently that didn't happen in this case, hence the lawsuit.

The timing couldn't be worse considering the state of the economy, fast food restaurants are competing for every buck they can get. Profit on sales can't be what it used to be considering the increasing cost of food, paying the staff, and now having to make major renovations to hundreds of buildings. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of these restaurants declare bankruptcy and the franchise owners move on to invest in other chains.

Agree.

It seems to me this is totally counterproductive in the current economy.

The law is the law, but isn't there some room for application of common sense?

Wouldn't it be smarter for the goverment to prevent every American from being allowed to order that crap? I think they should install obstacle courses people have to complete to gain entrance to order their beefless beef burritos.