U.S. v. Hoyts Cinemas Corp.

• Citation: 380 F.3d 558
• Decision Date: 20 August 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-1787.,No. 03-1808.,No. 03-1646.,03-1646.,03-1787.,03-1808.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, Appellee/Cross-Appellant, v. HOYTS CINEMAS CORPORATION; National Amusements, Inc., Defendants, Appellants/Cross-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

380 F.3d 558

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, Appellee/Cross-Appellant, v. HOYTS CINEMAS CORPORATION; National Amusements, Inc., Defendants, Appellants/Cross-Appellees.

No. 03-1646.

No. 03-1787.

No. 03-1808.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard February 6, 2004.

Decided August 20, 2004.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, William G. Young, Chief Judge.

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James R. Carroll with whom David S. Clancy, Christopher S. Fortier and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP were on brief for National Amusements, Inc.

Michael J. Malone with whom Patricia A. Griffin, Leslie J. Arnold and King & Spalding LLP were on brief for Hoyts Cinemas Corporation.

David K. Monroe, Steven John Fellman, and Galland, Kharasch, Greenberg, Fellman & Swirsky, P.C. on brief for National Association of Theatre Owners, Inc., Amicus Curiae.

Gregory B. Friel, Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Appellate Section, with whom R. Alexander Acosta, Assistant Attorney General, Michael J. Sullivan, United States Attorney, Michael J. Pineault, Assistant United States Attorney, and Jessica Dunsay Silver, Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Appellate Section, were on brief for the United States.

Before BOUDIN, Chief Judge, TORRUELLA and SELYA, Circuit Judges.

BOUDIN, Chief Judge.

This case comes to us on appeal from summary judgment, in an enforcement action brought by the United States under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12181-12189 (2000), granting relief against two movie-theater companies. At issue is the placement of wheelchair spaces in their "stadium-style" movie theaters. Similar cases have divided the circuits on the interpretation and application of a longstanding regulation designed to implement the ADA's accessibility requirements for movie theaters, concert halls, and like venues.

The ADA was enacted to remove barriers to equal participation by the disabled in community life. See 42 U.S.C. § 12101. The statute contains provisions, both general and specific, that apply to the design and construction of movie theaters and other facilities of public accommodation. Relying heavily upon the concept of "discrimination," the statute aims to assure a substantial measure of equality and integration for the disabled who use such facilities.¹ The provisions describing the overall "prohibition of discrimination" are cast in quite general terms (e.g., "full and equal enjoyment," "most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of the individual"). Id. § 12182(a)-(b). Other provisions, also generally phrased, govern new construction and alteration.²

To provide guidance for those who must comply, Congress created a multi-layered scheme. An existing government entity — the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, widely referred to as the "Access Board" — was directed to create new minimum guidelines (supplementing pre-ADA accessibility guidelines) within nine months of the ADA's enactment. 42 U.S.C. § 12204. The Access Board has representatives from numerous government agencies, including the Justice Department, and presumably has much experience with architectural issues. 29 U.S.C. § 792 (2000).

The statute further required the Attorney General within one year to promulgate regulations of his own consistent with the minimum guidelines issued by the Access Board. 42 U.S.C. § 12186(b)-(c). The Justice Department was also directed to provide technical assistance to the public in coordination with the Access Board, including in the form of technical assistance manuals. Id. § 12206(a)-(c). After overlapping notice-and-comment periods, the Access Board adopted the required minimum guidelines and, on the same day, the Justice Department adopted them as ADA regulations without change.³

One of the regulations — which is the focus of this case — is known as standard 4.33.3 and prescribes the placement of wheelchair spaces in newly constructed "assembly areas" set for first occupancy after January 26, 1993, and for alterations occurring after January 26, 1992. 28 C.F.R. §§ 36.401-.402, 36.406 (2003). The language most pertinent to this case reads as follows:

Wheelchair areas shall be an integral part of any fixed seating plan and shall be provided so as to provide people with physical disabilities a choice of admission prices and lines of sight comparable to those for members of the general public.

Id. pt. 36 app. A § 4.33.3. Further language requires a companion fixed seat next to each wheelchair seating area and provides that, where total seating capacity in the facility "exceeds 300, wheelchair spaces shall be provided in more than one location." Id. The standard contains no definition of "lines of sight," "integral" or any other term of art.

In 1991, when the regulations including standard 4.33.3 were adopted, most movie theaters were of a traditional type in which all seats are located on a single flat or sloped floor. In or around 1995, the new "stadium" movie theater concept was developed. Typically, a few rows of traditional seating on a flat or sloped floor were retained at the front of the auditorium, and behind them rose the majority of the seats on tiers of stepped risers — as in many sports stadiums. Somewhat confusingly, the term "stadium" is also often used to refer just to the section of the seating area on risers (at least, where the risers create a steep enough incline), as opposed to the more gently sloped seating area in front, which we will call for simplicity's sake "the slope."

Between 1996 and 2000, the defendants in this case — two big theater chains called Hoyts and National — constructed large numbers of stadium theaters, including the 500 or so at issue in this case, ranging in size from fewer than 100 seats to more than 600 seats. Most are roughly in the 150-350 seat range; of the 225 Hoyts theaters at issue, 41 have 300 seats or more, and of the 284 National theaters, 52 have 300 seats or more. These theaters are of many different designs, and the accommodations for wheelchairs vary; but in a great many of them the wheelchair positions are clustered (together with an ordinary companion seat for each wheelchair space) in the sloped section of the theater.

In smaller theaters with 300 seats or fewer, wheelchair spaces are typically in the sloped section, although in a few cases the spaces are at the back of the theater or (depending on how one labels spaces in an access aisle separating the slope from the stadium) arguably in the first row of the stadium section. In larger theaters with more than 300 seats, for which standard 4.33.3 requires more than one location, wheelchair spaces are dispersed accordingly, usually with some at the rear of the auditorium. Wheelchair placement decisions appear not to be irreversible; in some theaters, wheelchair spaces were initially placed in the front row, but later moved further back.

During the period from 1996 to 2000, as stadium-style theaters grew in number, the Justice Department made no changes to standard 4.33.3, although in July 1998 the Department filed an amicus brief in a private ADA enforcement action brought in district court against an individual theater complex. Lara v. Cinemark USA, Inc., No. EP-97-CA-502-H, 1998 WL 1048497, at *1 (W.D.Tex. Aug.21, 1998). There, the Department asserted that unobstructed lines of sight from wheelchair spaces were not enough; rather, the Department urged that under the ADA and standard 4.33.3, the quality of sight lines — as measured primarily by horizontal and vertical angles from the viewer to the screen — had to be comparable with those enjoyed by many or most non-wheelchair patrons.

On appeal the Fifth Circuit flatly rejected the Department's position, holding that the existing regulations required only unobstructed lines of sight, Lara v. Cinemark USA, Inc., 207 F.3d 783, 789 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 944, 121 S.Ct. 341, 148 L.Ed.2d 274 (2000). Further litigation followed in other circuits. Two of them — the Sixth and Ninth — ruled that viewing angles were a component of "comparable lines of sight" and that wheelchair-using patrons could not as a group be subject to highly uncomfortable viewing angles while superior angles were provided for other patrons.⁴

In each of these cases, the Department appears to have asserted that the "integral part" phrase in standard 4.33.3 requires wheelchair spaces to be located in the stadium section of stadium theaters, regardless of the size of the theater and the adequacy of viewing angles provided from the slope. However, an Access Board technical manual issued in July 1998 said that wheelchair spaces had to be within the "footprint of the seating layout" and that "bleachers with notches or cut-out areas" would qualify as integrated. Access Board, ADAAG Manual 117 (1998). The circuit cases, concerned primarily with viewing angles, have not clearly addressed the extent to which integration is required.

On December 18, 2000, the Justice Department brought the present enforcement action under the ADA, filing lawsuits (later consolidated) against Hoyts and National, in the district court in Massachusetts. The complaints charged that a number of theaters controlled by these companies were in violation of the ADA and standard 4.33.3. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief — including retrofitting existing theaters — as well as damages and civil penalties. Ultimately, the government contended that each company had more than two hundred non-complying theaters.

Discovery ensued, including reports by and depositions of experts on both sides. The district court refused to allow full-scale discovery of Justice Department files by which the defendants sought to show that the Department had been divided in its view of standard 4.33.3 or even had once embraced the defendants'...