CHICAGO (CN) — A federal judge in the Windy City decided Wednesday that Wrigley Field is not in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, concluding a five-and-a-half-year-old case against the Chicago Cubs.
The minor wheelchair-bound Cubs fan David Felimon Cerda first brought the suit in December 2017, via his father and attorney David Alberto Cerda. The pair claimed that recent renovations to the century-old Wrigley Field had removed favorable disability seating areas in order to make way for a slew of new luxury amenities, shunting Cerda Jr. and other fans in wheelchairs to "the worst seats in the house."
But U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso, a Barack Obama appointee who often sides with businesses in civil rights disputes, instead found that Wrigley Field had at least one more accessible seat than required under the ADA. His decision comes two months after a week-long bench trial in April, during which he personally visited the stadium. As a bench trial, Alonso, and not a jury, had the final say on the issue.
"Although Plaintiff’s situation is unfortunate, he fails to prove that the [the Cubs] violated the ADA," Alonso wrote in his 50-page ruling. "Specifically, Plaintiff fails to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that [Wrigley Field] fails to have the required number of accessible seats and that the accessible seats are horizontally dispersed around the stadium."
Cerda Sr. said he and his son planned to appeal the ruling in a phone interview, accusing the court of omitting "essential facts" in its opinion.
"Plaintiff will be appealing, certainly," Cerda Sr. said. He added that he and his son felt "shockingly disappointed" in Alonso's judgment.
The Cerdas' grievances with the Cubs began in 2014, with the start of a five-year-long renovation of Wrigley Field known as the 1060 Project - a reference to the stadium's address at 1060 W. Addison St. in Chicago. Prior to the renovations, the elder Cerda said at trial, he and his son would regularly attend Cubs games in a lower box wheelchair seating area behind home plate. By 2017 that seating area no longer existed. It had been destroyed to make room for a bar.
Cerda Sr. argued the new post-renovation seating arrangements since 2019 had made it more difficult for his son, who suffers from muscular dystrophy and has been attending Cubs games since infancy, to enjoy a day a Wrigley Field the same as any able-bodied fan. Per photo evidence he provided at trial, many extant disability seating areas in the stadium are behind poles or beneath visibility-blocking terrace overhangs. Some seats on the stadium's terrace level have such a poor view of the field that fans are provided with TV screens to watch instead.
"It's a textbook failure to integrate the seats according to the ADA," Cerda said in April.
But the Cubs' defense team - and Alonso - disagreed. At trial, the Cubs' attorneys argued that even able-bodied fans often have to deal with obstructed views in Wrigley Field, a relatively small stadium whose U.S. historic landmark status bars more extensive renovations. The same attorneys also claimed that as of 2023, Wrigley Field had 225 disability-accessible seats evenly distributed across the stadium, 26 more than the 209 such seats the parties agreed were minimally required by the ADA.
Cerda challenged more than half those seats as having impermissible dimensions under ADA regulations, but Alonso ruled Wednesday that he had failed to sufficiently support those claims with evidence. The judge instead favored the testimony of Doug Anderson, a partner at the Chicago-based architectural firm LCM Architects which reviewed the ADA compliance of Wrigley Field's post-1060 Project seating.
"Plaintiff claims that 15 accessible seats on the 300 level are not compliant with the ADA because they do not meet the minimum applicable dimensions required by the 2010 Standards for wheelchair spaces. Plaintiff, however, submits no credible evidence... to support his position," Alonso wrote. "The only credible evidence before the Court are the measurements taken by Cubs’ expert Mr. Anderson, which Mr. Anderson concluded comply with the ADA."
The judge admitted that some of the seats in the stadium would not comfortably accommodate Cerda Jr.'s specific type of motorized wheelchair, but opined that this by itself did not constitute a violation of the ADA. Cerda Sr. again contested this opinion, claiming the Cubs had relied on a loose interpretation of ADA regulations to make their argument stick.
"The way the Cubs won is by shoving a wheelchair under a railing and sticking their feet under another railing," Cerda said, adding that per current wheelchair aisle seat dimensions, "wheelchairs are jutting into the aisle."
As to another "batter's eye" disability seating area behind the outfield, which is sunken into a covered alcove, separated from the field by tinted glass and surrounded by a chain-link fence, Alonso declined to make any judgment.
At trial, Cerda noted this area as a particularly heinous ADA violation, arguing it effectively segregated disabled fans away from the rest of the stadium. But Alonso wrote off the area as irrelevant to his ruling, writing that even if the 15 seats in that area violated the ADA, it still left Wrigley Field with 210 ADA-compliant seats - one more than the stadium as a whole minimally requires under the law.
"The Court declines to decide whether the 15 accessible seats in the Batter’s Eye are ADA compliant, because there otherwise are at least 210 accessible seats at Wrigley Field—one more than the required minimum," Alonso wrote.
"They lost that one, but he didn't have to go there," Cerda said of Alonso washing his hands of the "batter's eye."
Besides the Cerdas' case, the federal government also sued the Cubs last July, accusing Wrigley Field of similar ADA violations. That case is still pending.
The Cubs' media relations office did not respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
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