Hypotheticals are left up to the courts to decide. Laws are for the here and now.

Hmmm, interesting. I'm not sure what level of preparedness a casino must have, although I suppose I could go searching for that later when I have more time. It's fairly clear that the Venetian was barely prepared for one SMA customer, or they would not have had to scramble to fit Cullen in. (And we wouldn't have what is now a three-page thread.)

I can tell you this: for each of our athletics venues, we are required to have a certain number of ADA-compliant seats, which consists of a place for a wheelchair and a companion chair. The number is based on the total capacity of the overall facility.
If we have no guests with accessibility needs, we still must leave these spaces open – e.g. we can't convert them to general admission seating, or repurpose them for concession/merchandise, or allow them to become standing-room-only areas.

There are also minima for the number of parking spaces, entrances, drinking fountains and restrooms accommodate guests with special requirements.

In reality, we almost never come to close to maxing out any of these accommodations for any of our events. But I have to say "almost:" on the calendar is an annual women's basketball game in which our coach invites a few hundred residents from the local retirement home**. For this particular promotion, we definitely push the limit of the arena's 60 or so total ADA spaces.

No biggie, we just convert SRO areas to additional ADA seating, and we're covered. (There are still some minor complaints, because this group would prefer to sit together but are now arranged in a single row that stretches around the concourse. No danger of lawsuits, though.) Practically speaking, my guess is that our basketball arena could allow as many as three times as many wheelchair-bound patrons to what is marked, especially if our facility staff knew in advance.

Now, if 1,000 people in wheelchairs ever showed up to a basketball game, our event staff would be hard pressed to make it work, short of a sizable construction project. Of course, this is not a concern, in part because it will realistically never happen. More crucially, our arena meets (and exceeds) the requirements as prescribed by the ADA.

However, are we "prepared" for such a scenario? I'm guessing no. And yet we're probably in the clear. (I'll have to pose that question for our campus counsel next time I see them, then enjoy watching the reactions.)

Of course, I'll tell you if the answer is "I don't know."

My uneducated guess is that the V, or any casino, is in a similar boat: there is a reasonable level of preparedness they must have to stay compliant with the law. And then there are some extreme situations that – while posing a logistical nightmare – do not put them in any sort of ADA trouble. Your Leeroy Jenkins Wheelchair Experiment would probably fall into the latter category.

And for some reason, this all makes me want to watch Season 2 of American Vandal yet again. St. Bernardine probably had enough restrooms to meet Washington state building codes, but simply was not prepared for a moment as extreme as The Brownout.




(**For those who don't know: college women's basketball draws a disproportionate number of senior citizens. I have a hypothesis as to why, but I'll spare you that.)

You are the worst kind of intellectual. The one that lambasts other interpretations with ‘concrete fact’ and then considers their own postulating to be above the same critique.

Then I'm in trouble, because I agree with a LOT of what you quoted there. From the standpoint of spreading COVID, Cullen and the caretaker are effectively one entity – especially when they're partitioned off by the glass. So I can see where he's coming from.

Of course, even that's not a hard-and-fast observation, because we don't know if the player and caretaker live together 24 hours a day. And ultimately, the fact that they are in close contact at other times doesn't change the requirements for when they're in a public space. e.g. two married people who live together are still required to both wear facial coverings when they go to the store.

By the way, do we know for sure how this situation was eventually handled? The inference from this thread is that Cullen's table was short-handed by one player to allow for the extra person. Just curious to know if that solution was confirmed.

A very long thread here and one that I have not read in it's entirety. I do think the disabled man has a case against the Venetian since they allowed him to play in the tournament before changing their stance and forcing him to withdraw. A settlement will probably be in the offing.

My second thought is that since he lives in Nevada he might want to consider playing online where he won't have problems like this in the future. He can enjoy playing poker online without any hassles from anyone.

It sounds like he did eventually get to play, though. This is what I'm trying to confirm, as I can't tell if some of the solutions in here (e.g. playing his table short-handed by one) actually took place, or if they were merely suggestions by other posters.