Lane v. City of Chicago

In September 2025, DRA and Lathan & Watkins LLP filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of four Chicagoland residents with mobility disabilities against the City of Chicago, challenging its widespread and ongoing failure to make its sidewalks, curb ramps, and other public pedestrian rights of way accessible to people with mobility disabilities.

Plaintiffs allege the City is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Read the complaint.

The class action lawsuit highlights the City’s failure to use a coordinated, proactive system to maintain its pedestrian rights of way as well as the City’s over-reliance on complaint-based, reactive, and ineffective programs, resulting in widespread barriers for people with mobility disabilities. Data from the City’s 311 system, for example, shows that thousands of sidewalk inspection complaints languish for years before resolution. Indeed, more than 20,000 requests for sidewalk improvements have been open for at least a year, and more than 6,000 have been open for more than three years.

The lawsuit not only documents these systemic failures, but also details specific remedial measures to guide the City in creating and maintaining pedestrian rights-of-way that are truly accessible to everyone. A more efficient, coordinated, and proactive approach is needed to ensure safe and accessible pedestrian infrastructure in the City.

Twenty years ago, people with mobility disabilities sued the City for failing to install, repair, and maintain curb ramps in violation of federal disability law. The City settled that case and invested millions of dollars to install thousands of curb ramps. But, since then, many curb ramps across Chicago have once again fallen into a state of disrepair. Chicago’s sidewalks, crosswalks, and other pedestrian infrastructure are similarly riddled with access barriers. They are deteriorated, cracked, crumbling, sunken, uplifted, uneven, full of holes, overgrown with vegetation or blocked with permanent mid-sidewalk obstacles, or too narrow to traverse—often, Chicago’s pedestrian passages contain several barriers at once.

Access barriers such as these make it difficult—if not impossible—for people who use wheelchairs, canes, scooters, and walkers to travel freely and participate equally in public life. These barriers impede travel, as people with mobility disabilities must find alternative accessible routes, use longer routes, or forego travel to difficult-to-reach locations. The barriers also create risks of injury or even death, as people often have no choice but to travel in the street with vehicular traffic.

Plaintiffs seek to require the City of Chicago to comply with these critical federal civil rights laws by ensuring that all sidewalks, curb ramps, and other pedestrian pathways are constructed, altered, and maintained to be accessible to people with mobility disabilities.