LSAC, Four Law Schools Sued For Discriminating Against Blind Applicants

This press release hit the wires yesterday:

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the nation's oldest and largest organization of blind people, and three blind students who have applied or are considering applying to law school in California—Deepa Goraya, Bruce J. Sexton, and Claire Stanley—filed an amended lawsuit yesterday against the Law School Admissions Council and four California law schools for violating provisions of the California Disabled Persons Act, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suit was filed because the law schools require or encourage applicants to use a centralized Internet-based application process provided by the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) through its Web site (www.lsac.org) that is inaccessible to blind law school applicants. Blind students must seek sighted assistance to use the LSAC system. Furthermore, blind law school applicants cannot perform other tasks on the LSAC Web site, such as downloading official study materials for the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) that is required by almost all U.S. law schools. The four law schools are: University of California Hastings College of the Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Whittier Law School, and Chapman University School of Law.