The Justice Department announced that Uber agreed to pay millions of dollars following a federal lawsuit arguing the car ride service had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The department said Monday that Uber “will offer several million dollars in compensation to more than 65,000 Uber users who were charged discriminatory fees due to disability,” following a lawsuit by the Biden Justice Department in November.
The federal lawsuit against the technology company last year aimed to “enforce Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” a law that the DOJ emphasized “prohibits discrimination based on disability by a private entity that is primarily engaged in the business of transporting people and whose operations affect commerce.”
DOJ said that its two-year agreement with Uber means the company “has committed to waive wait time fees for all Uber riders who certify that they (or someone they frequently travel with) need more time to get in an Uber car because of a disability” and that it will make wait time fee waivers easier for those with disabilities.
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The department said Uber “will credit the accounts of more than 65,000 eligible riders who signed up for the waiver program for double the amount of wait time fees they were ever charged” and will also pay $1.73 million to more than 100,000 passengers who complained to Uber about being charged wait time fees because of a disability, as well as $500,000 to other individuals DOJ said had been harmed by the policy.
“People with disabilities should not be made to feel like second-class citizens or punished because of their disability, which is exactly what Uber’s wait time fee policy did,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said. “This agreement sends a strong message that Uber and other ridesharing companies will be held accountable if their services discriminate against people with disabilities.”
Clarke added: “The Civil Rights Division remains committed to enforcing the ADA and ensuring that people with disabilities can travel free from barriers and indignities.”
“We’re pleased to have reached this agreement with the Department of Justice, and look forward to continuing to help everyone move easily around their communities,” Uber said in a statement on Monday. “It has long been our policy to refund wait-time fees for riders with a disability when they alerted us that they were charged, and prior to this matter being filed we made changes so that any rider who shares that they have a disability would have wait-time fees waived automatically. We are always working to improve accessibility for all users and encourage riders with a disability to utilize our self-declaration form to have wait-time fees waived.”
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The 2021 federal lawsuit said that, in 2016, Uber had started charging passengers wait time fees in what soon became a nationwide policy, with extra charges beginning two minutes after the Uber car arrived at the pickup location until the trip began. The DOJ said that “Uber violated the ADA by failing to reasonably modify its wait time fee policy for passengers who, because of disability, needed more than two minutes to get in an Uber car.”
