Deborah Laufer has finally found a case she doesn’t want a court to take up.

The disabled Florida woman has made a career out of the Americans with Disabilities Act by surfing the internet to find hotels she feels don’t meet the law’s standards for online information about accommodations for disabled patrons. Then she files lawsuits against the hotels.

She says she’s trying to force compliance. She has filed more than 600 complaints, reached settlements and then collected costs and attorney fees.

Her opponents say it’s a cash grab.

Now, Ms. Laufer is asking the Supreme Court not to hear the latest case she’s involved in, a challenge to a chain of hotels in Maine that refused to settle.

She says, through her lawyer’s court filing, that it’s a bad case because the lawyer who had been handling it has been sanctioned by a federal judge in Maryland over his approach to cases.

But Julianna Acheson, owner of Acheson Hotels LLC, says Ms. Laufer is afraid of having the money-making operation ended by the justices.

“Having filed several hundred lawsuits, Laufer’s sudden desire to conserve judicial resources is not credible,” Ms. Acheson’s lawyers said. “Far more judicial resources will be wasted if Laufer ducks this Court’s review, leading to hundreds more ‘tester’ suits being brought.”

An attorney for Ms. Laufer did not comment on the pending case but pointed to her client’s declaration submitted to the court in which Ms. Laufer says she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and lost her job. She developed depression and had a hard time traveling because hotels were not ADA compliant for her wheelchair.

After learning she could work toward ensuring the ADA requirements are met, she took up the opportunity so she could help others, according to her court declaration.

“Serving as an ADA plaintiff helped get me out of my depression because it allowed me to help myself and other people,” she said.

Ms. Laufer said she did not look to the ADA cases to make money.

“I have never received any payments for my federal ADA claims. I have received monetary damages a few times in lawsuits brought under state law,” she said.

Robyn M. Powell, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, said the case could have a big impact on disability rights because people rely on testers like Ms. Laufer to make sure their civil rights are protected as disabled individuals.

“Without testers like Ms. Laufer, the ADA would not be able to meet its objective of eliminating the often unintentional but still damaging exclusion of people with disabilities from places of public accommodation,” said Ms. Powell, who is not involved in the lawsuit.

Ms. Powell noted this is the first time the court has decided to hear such a case in 20 years, and she does not expect that the justices will dismiss the case as Ms. Laufer has requested.

“Given the Court’s majority-conservative composition, I could imagine a scenario where the Court could deny Laufer’s motion to dismiss because the bench is interested in narrowing the scope of the ADA,” the law professor said.

The justices are slated to hear the case, Acheson Hotels v. Deborah Laufer, on Oct. 4.

The Americans with Disability Act was enacted in 1990 to prevent discrimination against disabled people. It requires public establishments to make reasonable accommodations for disabled people to access the services and facilities. The attorney general implemented a regulation that requires hotel owners to describe features at the establishment for people with disabilities.

Ms. Laufer, who has impaired vision and needs a cane or wheelchair to move, said the Coast Village Inn and Cottages, an Acheson Hotels property, doesn’t list accessible rooms on its website and doesn’t provide enough information to figure out if she could be accommodated. She said that violates her rights under the ADA.

A U.S. District Court had sided with Acheson Hotels, saying Ms. Laufer wasn’t going to be an actual customer of the hotels so she didn’t have standing to sue. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, finding that withholding the information is in itself an actual harm to Ms. Laufer, and gave her legal standing to sue.

Other district and circuit courts have ruled the other way, creating the sort of split that makes a case attractive for the justices.

But Ms. Laufer says the case is moot because she’s dismissing the claim she filed in lower court — and other similar lawsuits — after Tristan Gillespie, one of her lawyers, was sanctioned in Maryland last month.

A state disciplinary board said Mr. Gillespie inflated his legal fees in roughly 800 lawsuits he filed for Ms. Laufer and another disabled plaintiff against hotel companies, seeking to collect costs and attorneys fees. None of the cases had gone to trial.

“Given that the complaints across all cases are boilerplate with few changes apart from dates and defendants, it appeared highly improbable that Gillespie actually could have accrued $10,000 in reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs when each demand was made,” the panel concluded.

Mr. Gillespie was suspended from practicing law before the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland for six months. He has appealed the punishment.

He did not respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Laufer said last month in a court filing with the Supreme Court that she did not want her prior attorney’s discipline record to distract from her cases. She agreed to dismiss her claims with prejudice.

“Although Ms. Laufer has not engaged in any improper conduct and continues to believe that her claims against Acheson and other hotels are meritorious, she recognizes that the allegations of misconduct against Mr. Gillespie could distract from the merits of her ADA claims and everything she has sought to achieve for persons with disabilities like herself. She accordingly has decided to dismiss all of her pending cases with prejudice,” her new lawyer, Kelsi Brown Corkran, argued in court papers.

Lawyers for the hotel, though, said letting Ms. Laufer out now would signal an all-clear to her and other plaintiffs “to resume their extortionate scheme.”

“Julianna Acheson has earned her day in court,” her lawyers said. “Despite her business being devastated by COVID, she refused to capitulate to Laufer’s settlement demands. She has expended time and money fighting Laufer’s pathological lawsuit all the way up to the Supreme Court. She is on the verge of protecting her business from future, similar lawsuits. The Court should decide the question it has already agreed to decide rather than condemning her to defeat without a hearing.”

• Stephen Dinan contributed to this story.

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.