Ships must obey US disabled laws
A disabled rights case that reached the Supreme Court in the US has ended with the court ruling that cruise ships must follow federal law that bars discrimination against disabled people.
But the court left it to lower courts to decide exactly what changes foreign-flagged ships, which make up the majority of vessels in US waters, will have to adopt, reports The Washington Post. The majority agreed that foreign-flagged vessels plying US waters could be required to eliminate barriers to disabled passengers. The case, Spector v Norwegian Cruise Line, posed a conflict between maritime law, with its age-old notion that governments may not normally meddle in the internal affairs of foreign vessels, and the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, with its requirement that places of public accommodation and private transportation entities be made open and accessible for disabled people. Full report in The Washington Post