The plaintiffs say in the lawsuit that lactose intolerance is a disability listed under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the surcharges violate that act.

Is it though? I mean don’t get me wrong, it sucks that people who are lactose intolerant have to pay more, but is it really a disability?

The issue with the ADA is that it does not specify what counts as a disability, rather it gives an explanation of what is considered a disability. This leads to endless confusion and to court cases exactly like this, which are leveraging the text of the ADA as it stands to make their point.

The lawyer quoted in the article is correct, considering they already accommodate people with diabetes without surcharge, it can be argued the same courtesy needs to be extended to the lactose intolerant, who do not have a “choice” in whether they can consume dairy.

Because they cannot just consume dairy like other customers, the lawyer is arguing that no longer charging for the difference is a “reasonable accomodation” to the fact that their clients bodies cannot process dairy. That definitely rises to the same level of reasoning for those who suffer diabetes, in my opinion.

Anyway, that’s the frustrating thing about a lot of the ADA. It basically requires people who don’t know if their unique position qualifies them to spend a lot of money on lawyers up-front just to find out if the courts will actually accept that as true. It’s really well fucked because most disabled people don’t have money to be pissing away on such a legal project. Most of them are busy just trying to survive, especially if they’re living off of the meager money provided by SSI/SSDI. In other words, most of the time you have to hope a lawyer will take up your case pro-bono.

Source: My cancer isn’t cancery or debilitating enough to count as a disability.

This leads to endless confusion and to court cases exactly like this, which are leveraging the text of the ADA as it stands to make their point.

That’s how common-law systems are designed to work, though (along with delegation to regulators in the executive branch). You can’t really expect the legislature to think through every single nuance and corner-case a-priori, right?