MobilityWorks Facing Class Action Over Alleged Refusal to Install Hand Controls on Wheelchair-Accessible Rental Vans

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Non-profit Community Resources For Independent Living has filed a proposed class action alongside two named plaintiffs who allege Mobility Works of California, LLC and WMK, LLC enforce discriminatory company-wide policies of refusing to install hand controls and/or other adaptive devices on vehicles the companies offer for rent.

According to the lawsuit, which cites alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Unruh Civil Rights Act, the defendants are among the nation’s largest providers of wheelchair-accessible vehicles. The plaintiffs allege, however, that the defendants’ refusal to adapt their rentable vehicles with hand controls, which allow drivers to accelerate or brake using their hands, leaves wheelchair-reliant individuals to either depend on non-disabled drivers, “thereby losing the freedom and independence inherent in being able to drive their own rental vehicles,” the complaint reads, or forego using the defendants’ services altogether.

The case charges that despite major rental car companies such as Hertz, Avis, Enterprise and Budget offering to install hand controls free of charge on their vehicles—with no “certification” or proof necessary, as the defendants supposedly require—the defendants are inexplicably unwilling to do the same. From the lawsuit:

“MobilityWorks’ business depends on people with disabilities, who are its target customers and primary source of profits. However, despite the company’s purported focus on ‘serving the disabled community,’ their policies of refusing to provide hand controls in rental vehicles and demanding superfluous ‘certifications’ do just the opposite—restricting the ability of individuals with mobility disabilities to drive independently. These policies violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and state disability access laws.”