A lawsuit has been filed against Florida challenging a state law allowing pregnant women to use handicap parking spaces.
This summer, Sunshine State lawmakers passed legislation authorizing expectant mothers to obtain permits for disabled parking signage.
The permits, which require a doctor’s note, cost $15 and are valid for one year, according to WFSU.
In response, a lawsuit filed in federal court last week accused the new permitting process of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates certain accommodations be afforded to disabled people.
“Those accommodations don’t exist just to make our lives easier,” plaintiff Olivia Keller, who was born without arms and uses a wheelchair, told CBS12. “They exist to make our lives possible.”
The new bill, signed into law by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in June, was designed to offer pregnant women relief from Florida’s sweltering summer heat.
State Rep. Fiona McFarland, who sponsored the bill, said she wants expectant mothers to be able to park close to storefronts. During a committee hearing last spring, she said that, when she was nine months pregnant, she would walk past unused handicapped parking spaces.
“Pregnancy is not a disability,” the GOP lawmaker said in the hearing. “I just want to be able to park up front.”
But Keller — represented by Nova Southeastern University’s Disability Inclusion and Advocacy Law Clinic and lawyer Matthew Dietz — has argued that the bill clearly flies in the face of the ADA.
The ADA, signed into law in 1990, mandates various rules about accommodations including that governments, businesses and non-profits must provide accessible parking spaces for individuals with disabilities.
“What the state cannot do is enact a law that lessens the protections for people with disabilities provided by federal law,” Dietz said, according to CBS12. “And that’s exactly what the state did.”
The lawsuit, filed in late October against the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, requests that the state be stopped from issuing expectant mother placards. It also asks to revoke placards that have already been issued.
Keller said she can sympathize with Florida officials wanting to make the lives of pregnant women more comfortable. But, she told CBS12 that people with disabilities should still be prioritized.
“If I don’t park there, I literally can’t get out of my car,” she said. “That means I can’t get to work, I can’t go to the doctor, I can’t live my life.”
