The two-count Complaint against Clifton Taxi and Limousine, Inc. alleges multiple violations of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD), including unlawful denial of service on the basis of disability, and failure to provide a reasonable accommodation for a person with a disability.

Filed in Superior Court in Passaic County, the Complaint alleges that Nicole Perkins of Jamaica, N.Y., who is deaf, contacted Clifton Taxi three times through a relay service on Jan. 21, 2014 as she waited for a bus that was delayed in Clifton. A heavy snow had begun falling in Passaic County and across the state at the time, and a State of Emergency was ultimately declared for every county.

Twice in succession, the relay operator called Clifton Taxi’s advertised phone number on behalf of Perkins and announced that she was assisting a deaf caller.

Both times, the State’s Complaint alleges, someone picked up the call, then hung up without responding to the relay operator. When the relay operator called for a third time, someone at Clifton Taxi again picked up the call and responded, “Please stop calling,” then hung up again.

During the Division’s investigation, Clifton Taxi offered multiple and sometimes contradictory reasons for their handling of the Perkins calls, leaving the Division to conclude that those reasons “were a pretext for denying service to Perkins because she is deaf, or because she called using a relay service.”

(Among the reasons viewed as contradictory by the Division were that Clifton Taxi does not send cabs out in the snow, and that there were no taxis available for Perkins when she called because they were all in use.)

Under federal law, all telecommunications providers are required to provide telecommunications relay services. Through these services, an individual who is deaf, hearing-impaired or has a speech disability can communicate – in real time – by telephone.  

In the incident at issue, Perkins used a relay service that allowed her to initiate a call by sending a text message from her cell phone to a relay operator.

The relay operator, in turn, placed a telephone call and attempted to verbally convey the text message communication received from Perkins to Clifton Taxi. 

In theory, Clifton Taxi would then respond verbally to the relay operator, the relay operator would convey that response to Perkins via text message, Perkins would answer via text message, the relay operator would relay Perkins’ message to Clifton Taxi, and the process would continue – with the relay operator acting as a medium – until the interaction had concluded.

However, after the relay operator was hung up on twice and a third call resulted in the relay operator being asked to stop calling, Perkins gave up trying.

In addition to denying Perkins service, the Complaint alleges, Clifton Taxi appears not to have trained its staff with regard to communications from deaf or hearing-impaired customers, and does not appear to have made its staff aware that deaf or hearing-impaired customers might call using a telecommunications relay service.

The Division’s Complaint seeks a number of remedies from the Court, including:

Division on Civil Rights Director Craig T. Sashihara explained that, for purposes of assessing liability damages and civil monetary penalties, the Division considers each of the three failures by Clifton Taxi to engage by phone with the relay operator who called on Perkins’ behalf as separate examples of unlawful denial of service, and unlawful failure to provide a reasonable accommodation .

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