Chris Haulmark, who is deaf, sued the City of Wichita and its mayor, Brandon Whipple, in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas, raising claims under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for allegedly denying him access to public benefits and services provided through the City’s official social media pages and the mayor’s personal campaign Facebook page. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants, and Haulmark appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Factual Overview:
Haulmark alleged that the City’s official Facebook and YouTube pages denied him and other deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals access to benefits that individuals without hearing disabilities could access. He claimed that some of the City’s online videos lacked captions, and that the captioning provided was inadequate for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals.
Regarding the mayor’s personal campaign Facebook page, Haulmark alleged that the mayor performed official duties through live video streams on this page, providing information about city issues and soliciting public input. Haulmark claimed this page was inaccessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals and that he had been banned from the page for raising accessibility issues.
The district court denied Haulmark’s motion to compel discovery concerning the mayor’s campaign page, granted summary judgment to the defendants, and denied Haulmark’s motion for leave to amend his complaint. Haulmark appealed these three decisions.
Legal Analysis:
City’s Social Media Pages: The Tenth Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment regarding the City’s social media pages. The court found genuine disputes of material fact concerning whether the City posted some social media videos without any captioning and whether the captioning provided reasonably accommodated the needs of deaf and hard-of-hearing persons. The court noted that Haulmark had provided evidence of videos lacking captions and examples of inadequate captioning that he claimed made it difficult or impossible for him to understand the information provided.
Mayor’s Campaign Page: The Tenth Circuit vacated the district court’s summary judgment on Haulmark’s claim about the mayor’s campaign Facebook page and remanded for reconsideration in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Lindke v. Freed. The Lindke decision set forth a two-part test to determine whether a public official’s social media activity constitutes state action: (1) whether the official possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf, and (2) whether the official purported to exercise that authority when speaking on social media. The court instructed the district court to reconsider its ruling using this new framework.
Motions to Compel and for Leave to Amend: The Tenth Circuit also vacated the district court’s orders denying Haulmark’s motions to compel discovery and for leave to amend his complaint. The court remanded these issues for reconsideration in light of the Lindke decision, which may warrant further discovery and potentially affect the analysis of Haulmark’s proposed amendments.
The Tenth Circuit reversed the district court’s summary judgment on the City’s social media pages claim, vacated the summary judgment on the mayor’s campaign page claim, vacated the denials of Haulmark’s motions to compel and to amend, and remanded for further proceedings consistent with its order and judgment.
Schrag on Law 