As a wheelchair user with multiple disabilities, travel is unpredictable at best and completely inaccessible at worst. In order to book my trips, I have to trust the accuracy of the websites run by hotels, airlines, car rental companies, and more to learn whether I can use their services (i.e., have the honor of paying them my hard-earned money.) The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires hotels to include enough of their accessibility features on their website that a person with a disability can judge whether their hotel would be safe and usable. Unfortunately, the features they include are often incomplete or inaccurate.

Hotels rarely identify what types of accommodations are available in their “accessible” rooms. At times, I will arrive to find my room is accessible for someone with an auditory disability, but not for a mobility disability like mine. While not necessary for me, having a visual or tactile fire alarm in their room could be the difference between life and death in an emergency for someone with an auditory disability. Hotels often take a kitchen sink approach to accessibility, throwing in a visual accommodation here and a mobility accommodation there, but failing to provide full accessibility to either group. This overlooks the point of accessibility, effectively making the room useless to many disabled travelers.

This “too little, too late” approach applies across the board with hotel accommodations. On three of my recent trips, I found that the shower in my room did not have a bench to transfer onto. Hotels ought to have shower chairs available in these scenarios; frequently, they do not, leaving me no choice but to lay or sit on the floor of a shower to clean myself. My friend Michelle, who uses a wheelchair, can’t shower at all in these situations. On three of five recent trips, Michelle has found herself assigned to an inaccessible room despite booking an accessible one. Even in “accessible” rooms, beds may be too high for people to transfer out of their wheelchairs safely, leaving some travelers to sleep in their wheelchairs.

My friend Alex, who also uses a wheelchair, shared that she must rely on her husband every time she travels to fill in gaps in hotel accessibility, from assistance transferring to navigating the room itself. Furniture regularly crowds hotel rooms in a way that leaves little room to maneuver a wheelchair, scooter, or walker. When we have to ask the hotel to remove some of this furniture, it can result in the removal of the very amenities we paid for — a desk to work remotely, for example. Unreliable accessibility makes it challenging or impossible for people with disabilities to travel independently; we simply do not know what lies on the other side of the door, forcing us to plan ahead and rely on others in anticipation of barriers.

The law only requires hotels to make a small percentage of their rooms accessible, compounding the problems disabled travelers face. Twice in the last year, I have arrived at a hotel only to be told that, despite having paid for early check-in, I would have to wait several hours in the lobby for the room’s current resident to depart. When pressed, it became apparent that it was the only accessible room available in the hotel, leaving me no choice but to wait. This problem often occurs because hotels will assign non-disabled patrons to their very limited number of accessible rooms to maximize profits — at the expense of disabled patrons’ access.

The upcoming Supreme Court case Acheson Hotels v. Laufer illustrates how hotels often fail travelers with disabilities, and offers an opportunity to solidify our right to hold hotels and other public accommodations accountable for these failures. Deborah Laufer, a person with disabilities, sued Acheson Hotels, LLC for failing to make clear whether the hotel was accessible on their website as required by the ADA. Now, the issue before the Supreme Court is whether Laufer can sue Acheson even though she has not visited their hotels and is not likely to. She is what many call a civil rights “tester.” Being a tester in civil rights cases is an honored and necessary role. It has evolved over the years, from Black patrons trying to enter a “whites only” waiting room, to women applying for typically male jobs, to families applying to “singles only” housing. In each case, the “tester” has no intention of taking the job or renting the housing — but, as a member of the class of people facing discrimination, can go to court to enforce civil rights laws.

As we outlined in a friend-of-the-court brief filed last week in the case, as a person with disabilities, Laufer is harmed, like any traveler with a disability, by Acheson’s failure to provide equal access to its accommodations. Laufer has every right to assert disabled people’s right to access knowledge of accessibility features; without it, how can we make informed decisions about where we will stay? How do we know the rooms will preserve our dignity by not leaving us to sit on the floor of showers or sleep in our wheelchairs? Allowing “testers” like Laufer to bring suit is a necessary component of enforcing disability law and promoting broad compliance with the ADA.

Travel may be a luxury, but accessibility is a necessity and a right. Until we make accessibility features widely and consistently available, travelers with disabilities will continue to face barriers and indignities where our non-disabled peers do not.

When it comes to our constitutional rights, we all have an obligation to stand up for what’s right.

That’s exactly what Jade Hopkins and Robert Kipp of Presque Isle did when they questioned the tactics used by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents to interrogate and intimidate Cyr Bus Line travelers during routine rest stops in Houlton.

We are asking Cyr Bus Line to join other bus operators, such as Concord Coach and Greyhound Lines, and adopt policies that protect their passengers from abusive CBP practices by denying federal agents access to Cyr buses without a warrant.

Customs and Border Patrol agents regularly board Cyr buses during rest stops in Houlton. During the stops, they interrogate passengers about their immigration status without a warrant and without any reasonable suspicion the passengers may be violating immigration laws.

On November 25, 2022, border agents handcuffed Jade and Rob, removed them from the bus, and detained them when they refused to answer agents’ questions. Jade and Rob’s luggage was taken off the bus and they were threatened with being stranded in Houlton unless they complied with agents, who not only questioned their immigration status but also demanded identification.

Needless to say, you do not need to be a U.S. citizen to ride a bus in Maine or anywhere else in the United States.

In addition to interrogations and illegal detention, the ACLU of Maine has learned that CBP is now also using drug-sniffing dogs to search all passengers’ luggage.

We also understand that Cyr bus drivers are instructing passengers that these dogs are drug-sniffing dogs and that CBP will confiscate any drugs they may find, including cannabis that can be legally possessed in Maine, including for essential medical care.

CBP is already overstepping its legal authority by regularly boarding Cyr buses, coercively interrogating passengers, and handcuffing and detaining passengers if they choose to exercise their legal right to not answer these unnecessary questions. But CBP’s new practice of using drug-alerting dogs to search all Cyr passengers’ luggage represents an even more egregious violation of passengers’ basic civil rights, for at least three separate reasons.

First, CBP’s use of drug-alert dogs is a clear attempt to expand its authority despite prohibitions imposed by the United States Supreme Court and federal law. CBP is not allowed to establish a checkpoint and search all vehicles in a certain area for drugs or board a bus to search for drugs without a warrant. CBP is using Cyr’s rest stop to circumvent these prohibitions. Since CBP cannot board or stop Cyr’s buses to search for drugs, CBP uses the drug-alert dogs and the rest stop to perform the search anyway. This demonstrates CBP’s disregard for the spirit of the law and the passengers’ privacy rights.

Second, CBP’s use of dogs is inherently problematic because the dogs routinely falsely indicate there are drugs where there are none. CBP has acknowledged its dogs sometimes have false alerts. At one CBP checkpoint, 96% of the dog alerts were false positives; in another case, 70% of CBP’s canine alerts were false positives. Despite being aware of this data and knowing its dogs are often wrong, CBP maintains that dog alerts create probable cause, and they use these false alarms to justify searching luggage or cars. In other words, CBP intentionally uses its poorly trained dogs as an excuse to search wherever they feel like searching. CBP’s continued use of canine alerts, despite their demonstrated lack of reliability, shows CBP’s disregard for the rights and well-being of Cyr passengers.

Third, CBP’s apparent intent to confiscate marijuana underscores that the canine units are not being used for any legitimate law enforcement purpose. Maine state law makes it legal to possess marijuana for recreational or medical purposes. Additionally, more than one year ago, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would not prioritize prosecuting marijuana-related offenses. Shortly afterwards, President Biden pardoned federal convictions for marijuana possession. In other words, possessing marijuana is not a crime under state law and is not being prosecuted under federal law; there is no legitimate law enforcement reason for CBP to search for and confiscate marijuana.  CBP’s flouting of state law and federal enforcement priorities shows the agency’s complete indifference to the law.

It takes a lot of courage to stand up to armed Customs and Border Patrol agents, to be placed and handcuffs and interrogated – all for doing nothing more than exercising your constitutional rights.

Jade and Rob took a stand for what’s right. We’re asking Cyr Bus Line to do the same: Stop the CBP interrogations and protect their passengers.

Know your rights when immigration agents board buses