[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 20-14846 ____________________ DEBORAH LAUFER, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus ARPAN LLC, d.b.a. America’s Best Value Inn,

Defendant-Appellee.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-00200-AW-GRJ ____________________ USCA11 Case: 20-14846 Date Filed: 03/29/2022 Page: 2 of 68

2 Opinion of the Court 20-14846

Before JORDAN, NEWSOM, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges. NEWSOM, Circuit Judge: Another day, another standing case. In this iteration, we have to decide whether an ADA plaintiff suffered a “concrete” in- jury when she viewed a hotel’s website that omitted accessibility- related information required by federal regulations and as a result, she says, experienced “frustration and humiliation”—even though she admits that she had (and has) no intention to personally visit the hotel. Today’s case raises difficult questions about how to ap- ply sometimes dissonant standing precedents. But in the final anal- ysis, our recent decision in Sierra v. City of Hallandale Beach, 996 F.3d 1110 (11th Cir. 2021)—which, in turn, relied on the Supreme Court’s decisions in Heckler v. Mathews, 465 U.S. 728 (1984), and Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737 (1984)—requires us to hold, at this stage of the proceedings, that our plaintiff has at least alleged an Article-III-qualifying “stigmatic” injury. I Deborah Laufer is “disab[led]” within the meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act: She has trouble walking without assistive devices, can’t use her hands normally, and is visually im- paired. See 42 U.S.C. § 12102(1)(A). She is a self-described advo- cate for disabled people’s rights and a “tester” who monitors whether places of public accommodation and their websites com- ply with the ADA. In 2019, in the Northern District of Florida USCA11 Case: 20-14846 Date Filed: 03/29/2022 Page: 3 of 68

20-14846 Opinion of the Court 3 alone, Laufer filed more than 50 ADA lawsuits against hotel own- ers. Arpan, LLC, the owner of America’s Best Value Inn in Mari- anna, Florida, maintains an online reservation system that Laufer says violates the ADA and its implementing regulations. In pertinent part, the ADA states that “[n]o individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, ad- vantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommoda- tion.” 42 U.S.C. § 12182(a). In particular, the Act prohibits afford- ing disabled persons an unequal ability to participate in or benefit from a service or accommodation, id. § 12182(b)(1)(A)(ii), and fail- ing to make “reasonable modifications in policies, practices, or pro- cedures” when “necessary” to ensure such participation, id. § 12182(b)(2)(A)(ii). The ADA provides a cause of action for any person “aggrieved” by a violation of the statute, see id. §§ 2000a- 3(a), 12188(a)(1) (noting that § 2000a-3(a) applies to those “being subjected to discrimination on the basis of disability” or who have “reasonable grounds for believing” that they are “about to be sub- jected to discrimination”), and directs the Attorney General to promulgate regulations to carry out the Act’s provisions, id. § 12186(b). One of those regulations applies to hotel owners and opera- tors, and governs “reservations made by any means, including by telephone, in-person, or through a third pa