We recently went to trial against a fast-food chain for lack of wheelchair access.  In trial, three of the chain’s customers who use wheelchairs and the son of a fourth, now deceased, took the stand and described their experiences.  They described these experiences as a practical matter — a door that closed on an ankle, a queue line that was too narrow, employees who ignored them or told them they could not even wait off to the side of the line — and as an emotional matter — what it felt like to encounter these barriers, to be ignored, to be told to wait somewhere else. They talked about their own lives, too:  a lay pastor who counseled people with disabilities; an advocate who is working with the Smithsonian on a disability history project; a woman whose parents took her to see Martin Luther King, Jr. and taught her to stand up for her rights; a man whose mother had worked to integrate people with disabilities into her chorus.

The fast-food chain’s response was:  you’re lying.  You’re lying and you’re greedy.  The chain’s lawyers called the restaurant’s assistant manager to the stand to testify that she didn’t recognize any of them.  The lawyers pointed out — in cross-examining the customers — that they might recover damages, that they had filed other lawsuits to challenge other inaccessible conditions, that this wasn’t the closest restaurant to their homes.  The chain’s hired expert — who uses a wheelchair — took the stand to say he didn’t mind the barriers, that he didn’t consider it discrimination.

Four people who took time out of their day, their days, to be deposed, to take the stand in trial.  Work hours missed, long rides on public transportation.  Just to be accused of greed and dishonesty.  To be challenged on the fact that they had a life that took them farther afield than the restaurant closest to their homes.  To be accused — rather than celebrated — for standing up to other facilities and other defendants who had excluded them.

We defended them in the language permitted us by the law, by the rules of civil procedure and evidence.  Objections to relevance.  Quotes from the governing appellate court:  “[f]or the ADA to yield its promise of equal access for the disabled, it may indeed be necessary and desirable for committed individuals to bring serial litigation advancing the time when public accommodations will be compliant with the [ADA].”*

But as always, the late poet Laura Hershey says it best:

Telling**

What you risk telling your story:

You will bore them.

Your voice will break, your ink

spill and stain your coat.

No one will understand, their eyes

become fences.

You will park yourself forever

on the outside, your differentness once

and for all revealed, dangerous.

The names you give to yourself

will become epithets.

 

Your happiness will be called

bravery, denial.

Your sadness will justify their pity.

Your fear will magnify their fears.

Everything you say will prove something about

their god, or their economic system.

Your feelings, that change day

to day, kaleidoscopic,

will freeze in place,

brand you forever,

justify anything they decide to do

with you.

 

Those with power can afford

to tell their story

or not.

 

Those without power

risk everything to tell their story

and must.

 

Someone, somewhere

will hear your story and decide to fight,

to live and refuse compromise.

Someone else will tell

her own story,

risking everything.

A brilliant call to arms — to words? — for those who risk so much in speaking up.  It feels mundane to quote it in the context of a fast food restaurant.  But that’s the point:  in simply describing a visit to a restaurant, ordering food, interacting with staff, you risk being called a liar and having your motives and experiences questioned and belittled.

I devote my professional energies to disability rights law, but mostly I do that sitting at a computer researching or writing.  From that sheltered vantage point, it’s easy to lose sight of the courage it takes to tell your story in a courtroom and to be challenged, belittled, and accused of lying.  I am deeply grateful for those who are willing to tell their stories.

***************************

*  Antoninetti v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., — F. 3d —, 2010 WL 3665525, at *7, slip op. at 16016 (9th Cir. Sept. 22, 2010).

** Quoted with permission. Thanks, Robin!