Folks may recall that I filed a complaint under the Americans with Disabilities Act against Best Buy after they called the police on me.
I finally got my official reply from the Department of Justice.
Last August I had gone into a Best Buy looking for some cables. “Security” caught up with me pretty quickly, and told me I had to leave. I invoked the ADA, and the guy’s response was “I’ll have the police escort you out.”
Now, I took that as an invitation to stay until the police arrived. When the police did arrive, there was a bit of a discussion about whether anybody with the authority to do so had actually asked me to leave, but eventually it was clear, so I left.
After that I wrote a complaint email to Best Buy, and they were the usual jerks: if I had let them know in advance they would have gotten a wheelchair for me.
No, a “reasonable accommodation” for me is just to let me walk through the store barefoot, not for them to be able to inflict a totally unnecessary monstrosity on me.
In follow-up emails to them, I did educate them a bit on the ADA, but they were adamant (and utterly paranoid). As far as they were concerned, bare feet were probably as dangerous as walking around doused in gasoline.
Anyways, you can go read the longer versions of what happened in my previous blog posts, Best Buy, Worst Way and Best Buy, Wussed Way. In the end I decided to file a complaint with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, which is where one files for violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Unsurprisingly, the DOJ declined to do anything. I got back a form letter, which also wasn’t too surprising. Here’s the first paragraph:
This is in response to the complaint that you filed with this office alleging a possible violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). After carefully reviewing the information that you provided, we have decided not to take any further action on your complaint. Unfortunately, because the Section receives thousands of ADA complaints each year, we do not have the resources to resolve all of them.
That really explains the long time-frame and the form letter. It’s clear that they have quite limited resources and they have to pick and choose carefully the cases they take. I also have to admit that, while I do think the situations for many barefooters, including myself, are such that they do fall under the ADA, there are plenty of other people out there with more extensive disabilities or difficulties that ought to get more attention.
The next paragraph of the letter hints at that while saying a bit more about their decision.
It is important to note that the Justice Department has made no determination regarding the merits of your complaint or whether it could be redressed under the ADA or another statute. Moreover, our decision not to take further action does not affect your right to pursue your complaint in another manner. You may wish to contact an attorney or legal service provider to determine what remedies may be available.
As I said, this was just a form letter. What that means is that, behind the scenes, we have no idea whether the agent who analyzed it spent their time laughing at the idea, or gave it serious consideration. They might even have been turned off at the prospect of the (probably negative) publicity that would ensue if they pursued a barefoot case. What I do know is that, and I put this in my complaint, wearing shoes makes my back and knees hurt; they are pretty-much just fine when barefoot. As far as I am concerned, I shouldn’t have to put up with arrogant businesses who ignorantly claim some sort of safety concern. And from my reading of the ADA, that matters.
So, do I pursue this further, or even sue?
The DOJ letter also included a list of various state and local agencies that might be able to help. That leads to a different issue: how ought disabilities ought to be rated, and does that even matter? According to the ADA, it shouldn’t matter—accommodations should be open to all, regardless of their degree of disability. It’s pretty clear to me that what shoes to do feet, and how that works its way up the whole body, qualifies as a disability. But does pursuing something based on that denigrate those with much more visible, and much more incapacitating, disabilities? I don’t know.
Quite frankly, I could probably handle pursuing a lawsuit on my own.
But would it be worth it?
The problem is, how do you prove pain?
If one has a clear and obvious physical deformity (due to accident or otherwise), then an official disability is pretty easy to determine. But what do you do to show that shoes exacerbate pain, and that going barefoot relieves it?
Yes, I have a note from my doctor, but if you think about it, all that really can do is note the shattered cartilage in one of my knees, and relate my very own description of how going barefoot alleviates the pain. In addition, to tell you the truth, I like my doctor and really wouldn’t want to put her through the hassle of having to testify in any sort of lawsuit. And as I noted, all she could really testify to is my medical history and that I said going barefoot relieved my pain. I doubt that would be enough.
Sure, we might also be able to get some more enlightened podiatrists to talk about shoe damage. But the defense would be able to pull out their own slate of old-school podiatrists (I’ve written about them here on the blog) who still think that feet are naturally deformed and always need support. I don’t see any strong prospects for a win.
In the end, when any of us try to rely upon the Americans with Disabilities Act, we are basically going to have to be relying on the kindness of strangers. We have to hope they listen to us and will keep an open mind about their preconceptions. They are wrong when they think bare feet are somehow dangerous; they are wrong if they think there are some sorts of sanitary concerns.
But if they dig in their heels, my assessment is that there really isn’t much more we can do.
We can try to persuade. If that fails, we can threaten. But in the end, I don’t think the options available to us are all that useful. It would be different if the disability were more obvious, or if such prejudice against barefootedness did not exist.
For now, at least, though, that is where things stand, in my opinion. I still think it is valuable to file complaints with the DOJ; maybe eventually they’ll see enough of them to start to understand that this is a really issue and take one of the cases. In the meanwhile, we do what we can, but we cannot expect much help.
Ahcuah 
I’m sad to hear that they didn’t take your case, and sad that you aren’t going to pursue it on your own.
In Canada, at least, the onus is *supposed* to be on the business to prove that it would be an undue hardship to accommodate you, which of course it wouldn’t be. Supposed to be, of course. It worked out very well for me in Vancouver, but back east people don’t want to accept my medical documentation, and so the business/service never has to make their case. My transit case here in Montreal is still pending. I think if I had money, I would have no problems winning, and that my main problem is that I’m very poor and can’t swing the system my way.
I wouldn’t worry about taking space away from people with more serious disabilities. The principles are the same across the board, and something like your case should be a lot simpler to resolve than a more complex medical situation. Like, I *think* I can get accommodation for my bare feet without too many problems if I can just get them to understand the issues. I *may* be able to get accommodation for not being able to use a phone (I’m autistic, and many of us have problems with this, but it isn’t common knowledge), but that would be much harder (not including documentation) because it would require effort on the part of the businesses/services to change their business plans (but they should do it, regardless). But getting accommodation in a workplace is so far beyond my expectations I’m not even going to bother, even though you would think that’s the one that matters the most.
Start with the easy stuff, is how I see it.
I’m not that familiar with US law, but if you think of your back and knee pain not as a disability, but as a chronical illness? Your doctor prescribes going barefoot as a therapy to alleviate your pain. Aren’t there laws that prevent discrimination due to illness (except for infectious diseases) or injury?
I think it is pretty clear that Best Buy violated the law. The problem is that the only remedies either depend on overworked and underfunded enforcers, or using a method (suing) of dubious outcome, at best.
I had a similar situation happen to me Bob knows what I’m talking about. I’m a runner who can only run in barefeet due to a disability related to injuries I sustained from running. Over the winter I was not permitted to run barefoot in my local indoor track and even apparently cater to those who have disabilities. http://www.abilitiescentre.org/home
I also have a doctor’s note and thing is you have to sign a wavier to use the facility but they still wouldn’t let me run barefoot due to “safety reasons”. In the end it’s a long fight to get rights that we should already have.
Too often I forgot that some do not go barefoot just for fun like me, but have medical reasons to do so. That putting on shoes is not just an inconvenience. Thank you all for reminding me.
They don’t take us or our need seriously, bottom line. To offer a wheelchair is an additional slap in the face, and that is what we are left with. I am disappointed in our system.
I agree and I think it all boils down to ignorance. I’ve tried presenting numerous amounts of evidence and they ignore all of it and don’t even say how they come to their conclusions, that you must wear shoes for safety (which they are supposed to by law). It all seems very discriminatory and very backwards, especially for a facility that supposedly prides itself on being inclusive to everyone.
You know, if there was a facility with stuff falling off the ceiling all of the time, we all know that they would not be saying that you had to wear a hard hat for safety (which they are supposed to by law). They’d inspect and fix the damn ceiling!
That’s because what they really are enforcing is social conformity, but they cannot admit that is what they are really doing, because it would not be taken seriously. So they lie about liability and ignore facts that disprove what they say. And they do not know, or care, that gyms during the 1970s had people working out barefoot all the time and it was no big deal.
It’s quite sad to hear these stories over and over again from the U.S. and Canada. Come to Germany, is all I can say…:) We don’t have exactly a reputation as the Land of the Free, but you can be barefoot almost everywhere. There are no such things as “NSNS” signs here. Neither in malls or supermarkets nor in banks or even at the dentist’s have I ever had problems because of my naked feet (and in a dentist’s chair they are highly visible). Store owners, security guards, desk clerks, and so on just don’t care. It does indeed seem that in North America there is more public pressure for social conformity (good diagnosis, Beach Bum) than elsewhere. A pity.
Thanks, Bob, for directing me over here. It’s disheartening to see that our government has, yet again, left us with nothing more than a slap in the face.
I’m a disabled veteran of the US Army. I was medically discharged after both the Army and the Veteran’s Administration conducted extensive medical workups on me and then declared me “physically unfit to perform the duties of a Soldier.” I have a well documented medical history of chronic back and knee pain and evidence that traditional medical remedies possesses very little effects. I stumbled upon barefooting as a last resort to feel any decrease in pain as my own personal research hinted at the negative effects from footwear on the musculoskeletal system.
Still, if those of us who are truly disabled and find physical relief from a barefoot lifestyle aren’t even protected by laws that claim to support the disabled, where do we turn? What’s the answer? Do we flood their mailboxes with our attempts to be heard?
Truly depressing…
A couple of thoughts.
First, that’s the letter I got, which means they just didn’t take my situation. If the DOJ keeps getting similar complaints from those barefooters for whom shoes really are a problem, maybe at some point they’ll decide there really is an issue there and they will do something. So, don’t let my experience discourage you from writing your own letter of complaint. And for you, being an Army veteran might make some sort of difference.
Second, they did send me a list of more local contacts. Often states have similar laws and the state enforcers may not be as busy, and they may be more sympathetic. (One problem, though, of course, is that so many people are convinced that every barefoot jaunt into a store will result in bloody stubs.) Of course, each person must decide for themself how much effort they want to put into this.
I certainly appreciate your thoughts, Bob. I perceive you to be a man whose head understands these concepts a lot better than myself so I hope you don’t mind my asking a couple of questions…
First, what needs to “happen” before one would consider they have a valid reason for evoking ADA rights? Let’s say I enter a business with bare feet and I’m told that I need to leave the premises for whatever nonsense they’re willing to feed me. Do I reply back to them that I’m barefoot due to a disability? Am I stuck with the burden of proof? Do I (should I) raise the topic of ADA?
I suspect, the DOJ receives thousands of complaint letters that often result in a fashion much similar to yours. I suppose it could be due any number of factors. Perhaps the complaint wasn’t properly documented or the DOJ just doesn’t have the resources to follow up with every letter they receive.
I’ve tried to read through the information contained within the ADA but I must admit that much of the language often feels vague and somewhat open to interpretation. Far too often, I’ve heard many barefooters debate the protection of the ADA where I’ve perceived many of them to be a bit “too” confident but really have no proof that the DOJ would, in fact, back them up if push comes to shove.