Letter to the Editor: New Regulations Will Force Hotels to Close Pools

Conn Carroll was right to criticize the Obama administration for potentially forcing thousands of hotel swimming pools to close through its onerous re-interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The administration’s demand that hotels stop using portable lifts for the disabled and install fixed lifts in their pools instead will impose up to $20,000 in installation costs for each pool, increase risks to child safety, and open hotels to repeated demands for thousands of dollars in attorney fees until they do so.

Those added costs menace the continued operation of the nation’s 300,000 public swimming pools, which were recently ordered to install such lifts by March 15th — an impossible deadline to meet.

To avoid potentially massive liability to trial lawyers under the ADA’s attorney-fee provisions, the smaller and cheaper hotels that cater to people of modest means may simply decide to close their pools.