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A woman in a wheelchair fighting for a ramp to be built at her local post office will be able to make her argument in court after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated summary judgment for the United States Postal Service, which so far has refused to build the ramp. One concurring judge even accused USPS of discrimination.
The case involves Shellie Ellison, a woman with a disability that requires her to use a wheelchair. The closest and largest post office to her home is the Shelbyville Post Office.
Ellison keeps a P.O. box at the Shelbyville location for her nonprofit, Wheels on the Ground, which focuses on educating the public about accessibility for people with disabilities. However, the Shelbyville location does not have a wheelchair ramp, and USPS refuses to build one.
Ellison thus sued the Postal Service under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, seeking an injunction.
But the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana entered summary judgment for the Postal Service, finding it didn’t need to install a ramp because Ellison could access its services through its website. The court also noted there were three wheelchair-accessible locations within 15 minutes of her home.
Ellison’s motion for summary judgment was denied.
The case then went to the 7th Circuit, where Ellison argued the district court erred because the record shows she lacks meaningful access to the Postal Service’s program through alternative methods.
The appellate court noted there are three potential accommodations available to Ellison: asking for help at the post office’s loading dock or a van-accessible parking spot, using the Postal Service’s website, or visiting wheelchair-accessible locations in surrounding towns.
Finding those alternatives do not give Ellison meaningful access to her local post office, the 7th Circuit vacated summary judgment for USPS.
Writing for the appellate court, Judge Doris Pryor first addressed the option of asking for help from the loading dock or a van-accessible parking spot.
For a while, Pryor said, the Postal Service had directed Ellison to the loading dock, and from there she would make her way up a ramp and push the call button. Sometimes an employee would respond, and if they did, they would not let her in through the back door. Instead, Ellison had to wait outside on the loading dock while the employee would travel back and forth to carry out her requests.
Ellison eventually became frustrated with the setup and complained to the United States Access Board, which decided that because of the age of the Shelbyville Post Office, it could not require the United States Postal Service to alter the front entrance by building a ramp.
Instead, the Postal Service spent $60,000 to renovate the area around the loading dock. That allowed for a van-accessible parking space, a call button in that space and a less steep loading ramp.
However, delivery trucks often blocked the parking space, leaving Ellison outside waiting for an employee to help her.
The Postal Service offered to deliver the mail from her P.O. box to her home, but she explained that she preferred to keep the mail delivered to her P.O. box separate from her personal mail so that executives in her nonprofit could easily collect documents they needed.
Ellison was not the only one dissatisfied with the means of accessing the Postal Service’s program.
After many complaints, the city of Shelbyville offered to pay for a ramp at the Shelbyville Post Office’s front entrance. But the Postal Service declined, citing a policy of refusing donations for exterior physical improvements.
Turning to the potential accommodation of using the USPS website, Pryor noted ground shipping, which is the cheapest option, is not available online. Also, shipping materials can take over a week to arrive, some products come with delivery fees, and customers cannot receive hands-on assistance online.
Finally as to the option of visiting another post office, Pryor noted the closest accessible locations are about 15 minutes away from Ellison’s home, compared to her seven-minute drive to the Shelbyville location.
Ellison now visits a wheelchair-accessible private shipping company, where she pays three times as much for the same services offered by the Postal Service.
“A reasonable jury looking at this record — which shows why the Shelbyville Post Office and website were insufficient yet contains no information about the services provided at the alternative post offices — would have to conclude that Ellison lacked meaningful access to the Postal Service’s program,” Pryor wrote. “The only way a jury could find for the Postal Service on this question would be by impermissibly speculating about what lies inside the wheelchair-accessible post offices. … Ellison therefore showed that without an accommodation she lacks meaningful access to the Postal Service’s program.”
The 7th Circuit remanded the case for the district court to consider whether Ellison’s proposed accommodation — a wheelchair-accessible ramp — is reasonable.
In a separate concurrence, Senior Judge David Hamilton expressed frustration with the USPS argument.
“It’s 2023, for heaven’s sake,” Hamilton wrote. “The Rehabilitation Act was enacted 49 years ago. The Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted more than 30 years ago. One would be hard pressed to find any institution other than the Postal Service that would even dare make the arguments the defense has made in this case.”
Hamilton said he would go further and reject on broader grounds the Postal Service’s theory that it had “accommodated” Ellison by sending her to other post offices in other towns.
He also noted that the Postal Service said it had estimated the cost of a ramp but never disclosed that amount to Ellison or the court.
“Whether that privilege claim is valid or not, the Postal Service simply has not offered evidence that a ramp would be unreasonable,” he wrote. “We could just as well order summary judgment in favor of plaintiff on this point rather than order further proceedings on remand.
“Third, at the risk of stating the obvious, the proposed ramp will benefit not just plaintiff Ellison, but thousands of other residents of Shelby County who would like to use the Shelbyville Post Office but cannot cope with its inaccessible entrance,” he continued. “These broader benefits need to be part of any calculation of reasonableness.
“… In 2023, the refusal to make a post office wheelchair-accessible should be deemed ‘discrimination’ under the Rehabilitation Act without further ado.”
The case is Shellie Ellison v. United States Postal Service, 22-1967.
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