It’s been well documented that college athletic departments are engaged in an arms race, seeking out the best staff and facilities that money can buy. Unfortunately, such a singular focus can lead to legal problems.
Take the University of Michigan for example. Last spring, it was sued by the Michigan Paralyzed Veterans of America, which claims an upcoming stadium renovation project should include considerably more handicapped seating than Michigan plans.
In September, the university announced it will add approximately 14 more wheelchair accessible seats. However Richard Bernstein, an attorney for the group, says that number of additional seats is “a pittance of what the law requires.”
The law Bernstein refers to is the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires new stadium construction and renovation to have one percent of seats to be wheelchair accessible with an additional one percent of seats to be for wheelchair companions. Not only must there be seats available, they must also fit specific guidelines.
In the Department of Justice’s disability right’s section, it reads, “Whenever more than 300 seats are provided, wheelchair seating locations must be provided in more than one location. This is known as dispersed seating. Wheelchair seating locations must be dispersed throughout all seating areas and provide a choice of admission prices and views comparable to those for the general public.”
Currently, Michigan Stadium has 90 seats for the disabled, split between the two end zones. Included in the school’s expansion plans are an additional 72 wheelchair seats to the top row of the west side of the stadium bowl. There will also be wheelchair seating in two new sideline structures that will contain a new press box, and pricier luxury suites and club seats.
Although the total number of wheelchair seats will rise to 315, the veterans group believes the renovation plans are extensive enough to require Michigan to comply with the ADA, or installing roughly 1,070 disabled seats in the stadium. The lawsuit seeks to block the renovation until the university provides “full and equal access” to the stadium for the disabled.
Another school faced similar challenges with its stadium. In August, Oklahoma State University settled an ADA lawsuit, agreeing to build “new accessible platforms to accommodate 175 wheelchair assisted individuals and their companions.”
OSU attorney Michael Scott Fern says the stadium had some wheelchair accessible seats available before the 2005 ADA lawsuit, but the additional seats will make the number of wheelchair accessible seats in the stadium more consistent with the ratio of disabled people in the general population.
However, the number of required wheelchair accessible seats might be changing in the near future. Turner Madden, an attorney with Madden & Patton LLC in Washington D.C., told Legal Issues in Collegiate Athletics that the ADA’s percentage of wheelchair accessible seating will most likely be lowered to .5 percent of total seats, instead of one percent.
“The ACCESS board, an independent Federal agency devoted to accessibility for people with disabilities, did several studies and found that only 10 percent of wheelchair spaces are being used across the country,” said Madden, who is also the Legal Counsel for the International Association of Assembly Managers. “When the Department of Justice chose one percent as the number in 1989, they basically just grabbed a number out of the air. Now that studies have been done, people realize that this number is very hard for stadiums to accommodate.
“For each wheel chair seat, which has to have an enhanced view – 3 feet above the seat in front of it which requires the section to be built up – it takes out about four conventional seats per every one wheel-chair accessible seat. In a stadium that holds 80,000 seats, that is 800 disabled seats required under the current law. Or in terms of conventional seats, it is over 3,200 seats required.”
In terms of stadiums trying to meet the current one percent requirement in renovated areas, Madden said some stadiums put in temporary wheel-chair accessible seating that will be removed if the requirement lowers.
Additionally, the ADA states, “removable or folding seats can be provided in wheelchair seating locations for use by persons who do not use wheelchairs so the facility does not lose revenue when not all wheelchair seating locations are ticketed to persons who use wheelchairs.”
In terms of deeming whether a stadium’s renovations will require it to meet the ADA seating requirements, Madden believes it will be a case-by-case basis.
“All of these cases are different. When San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium renovated their club area, they added extra disabled seating because they had to meet the ADA standards. However, only the area being renovated must meet the requirement, not the entire stadium.”
