Oct. 4--The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday ordered Coast Resorts to renovate more than 800 rooms at The Orleans to bring the hotel into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

In addition to the hotel rooms, the company was ordered to redo two slot kiosks. The renovations are projected to cost more than $800,000. 

The decision is the latest local victory for the Salt Lake City-based Disabled Rights Action Committee, which has sued entities ranging from the Hard Rock Hotel to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas's Thomas & Mack Center for alleged ADA violations. 

"This was the first case in which the structure of a casino was the subject of a lawsuit that the committee was involved in," said Salt Lake City attorney Richard Armknecht, who argued the case for the committee before the court of appeals. "The federal courts in Nevada are, as the case indicates, not as inclined to issue injunctions as a plain reading of the statute would indicate." 

The case began in 1997, when Roger Long, Ronald Ray Smith and the committee visited The Orleans and found five alleged ADA violations. 

First, although U.S. Department of Justice guidelines require bathroom doorways in hotels to be at least 32 inches wide, 97 percent of the 839 rooms at The Orleans had doorways smaller than this. 

The plaintiffs also alleged that half of the casino's slot change kiosks were inaccessible to the disabled, the employee areas in the change kiosks couldn't reached by wheelchairs, two of the casino's bars lacked counters or tables that could be reached by the disabled and, finally, that many of The Orleans' pool cabanas were inaccessible to patrons in wheelchairs. 

Although Roger Hunt, then a U.S. magistrate judge, agreed that the hotel's bathroom doorways and bars violated the ADA, both sides appealed his decision. 

In ADA cases "(Nevada federal judges) tend to see the defendant as the victim and exercise their equitable discretion in favor of the defendant," said Armknecht. "I think there's an awareness in the builder community and the architect community of this predisposition, and they don't have the fear of the law in them that one would expect from the plain reading of the statute." 

At the appellate court, lawyers for The Orleans argued that bathrooms in guest rooms were not part of the room's "sleeping unit" and thus didn't need to comply with the ADA. 

U.S. Circuit Justice Michael Daly Hawkins and his colleagues disagreed. 

"It defies logic to think that the intent was to allow hotels to render the bedroom inaccessible from part of a guest's bathroom," Hawkins wrote. 

Las Vegas attorney Barry Lieberman, who argued the case for The Orleans before the appellate court, was philosophical about the verdict. 

"We believe that Judge Hunt had ruled correctly," he said. "On the other hand, we respect the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and they are the arbiters of the law in this circuit." 

Lieberman said no decision has been made yet on whether to appeal the decision. 

Hawkins agreed with Hunt's determination that the hotel couldn't be forced to alter the location of the pool cabanas. The appellate court also sustained Hunt's ruling that the plaintiffs didn't have standing to bring an ADA challenge to employee work areas, since they weren't employees of the casino. 

Hawkins did hand the hotel one victory by reversing Hunt's ruling that the Alligator and Crawfish bars did not comply with the ADA. 

Although the case may have been the first published local ADA case on casino interiors, Armknecht said it won't be the last. A case involving similar access issues is currently pending against the Stratosphere. Hunt, now a U.S. district judge, is hearing that case as well. 

Although The Orleans is in the middle of a major expansion of its hotel, gaming and entertainment facilities, Lieberman said he didn't expect to run into any ADA issues in the future 

"Our goal is always to be fully compliant with all laws, including the ADA," he said. "Certainly the bathroom doors in the expansion project will be 32 inches wide." 

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