National Roundup

Florida
Judge sides with Disney in case of autistic accommodation
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A judge has sided with Walt Disney World in ruling that the theme park resort wasn’t being unreasonable when it refused to give unlimited front-of-the-line passes to an autistic man whose mother said in court papers the accommodation should have been made under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

U.S. District Judge Anne Conway ruled last week that it was unreasonable to give Donna Lorman’s son such access, saying it was ripe for abuse.

Lorman filed the lawsuit after Disney World changed its policy on disabled guests in 2013 in response to reports of tourists hiring people with disabilities and terminally ill children to help them go to the front of lines and ride multiple times.

Disney created the Disability Access Service Card which lets people with disabilities get return times for rides, similar to a FastPass, so they don’t have to wait in a line, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
As an example, Disney said in court papers that the standby line at Magic Kingdom’s popular Seven Dwarfs Mine Train coaster would increase by 39 minutes, from 69 minutes to 108 minutes if disabled guests got two more re-admission passes.

Lorman, president of the Autism Society of Greater Orlando, said the extra waiting was hard for her son who didn’t understand the concept of time. At Disney, he needed to visit the rides in a particular order or he would have a meltdown, she said.

She had asked 10 passes to the Magic Kingdom so her son could ride his favorite attractions by going directly into the FastPass line.

If Lorman’s son got special access, others would see it on social media and demand it, too, the judge said.

“Requiring the modification, based on the history of the former system, would lead to fraud and overuse, lengthen the wait times significantly for non-disabled guests, and fundamentally alter Disney’s business model,” Conway wrote.

Maryland
Name of ex-Supreme Court justice taken off historic warship
BALTIMORE (AP) — The name of a former U.S. Supreme Court chief justice who had ruled before the Civil War that free Black people and enslaved persons were not U.S. citizens is being removed from a historic warship.

Roger B. Taney’s name has been taken off the retired warship that survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and is currently being overseen by Baltimore’s Living Classrooms Foundation, The Baltimore Sun reported Wednesday.

Taney delivered the majority opinion in the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford case, which also asserted that enslaved Black people had no pathway to citizenship and no rights.

Taney, who was born in Maryland and practiced law there, rose to become the nation’s fifth chief justice. Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, were slaves who sued for their freedom after they were taken from the slave state of Missouri into territory where slavery had been prohibited by the Missouri Compromise.

The former U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Taney, a national historic landmark and the last surviving warship from the Pearl Harbor attack, serves as a museum for students and the general public focused on the men and women who served aboard.

James Piper Bond, president and CEO of Living Classrooms Foundation, said in a statement Wednesday that the foundation was inspired to make the change, calling the court ruling involving Taney “an abomination” and “great injustice” toward African Americans.

“The national historic landmark we are charged with stewarding should be reflective of our values of equality and opportunity for all,” Bond said. “We are not erasing history. Nor is it our intention to minimize the service and sacrifice of the men and women who have served with honor aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Taney. Our intention is to learn from history and celebrate the legacy of the ship and those who served aboard.”

The decision was approved of by Living Classrooms Foundation’s board of trustees and their Historic Ships in Baltimore advisory board. The U.S. Coast Guard was notified of the change by the foundation in coordination with the city of Baltimore, a spokesperson confirmed.

U.S. Rep Andy Harris, Maryland’s only Republican congressman who serves the First District, said in a statement that the removal of the name goes against the foundation’s educational mission.

“Attempts to re-write shortcomings in our history, instead of using them to educate future generations, is a very bad idea – especially for a museum whose whole stated purpose is history,” the statement said.

At least for now, the ship will be referred to by its hull identification WHEC 37, which stands for High Endurance Cutter, according to the foundation. The Taney name already has been removed from the ship’s stern.

Statues of Taney outside the Maryland State House in Annapolis and in Baltimore were removed in 2017, following a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that summer and the subsequent calls to remove Confederate-era memorials around the country.

Missouri
Man freed from prison with help from WNBA’s Maya Moore
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man was freed from prison Wednesday after a county prosecutor declined to retry his case, punctuating years of work by WNBA star Maya Moore and other supporters who argued he was falsely convicted of burglary and assault charges.

Moore was on hand when Jonathan Irons, 40, walked out of the Jefferson City Correctional Center. She clapped as Irons approached a group of people waiting for his release. She then dropped to her knees at one point before joining a group hug around Irons.

He had been serving a 50-year prison sentence stemming from the non-fatal shooting of a homeowner in the St. Louis area when Irons was 16. But a judge threw out his convictions in March, citing a series of problems with the case, including a fingerprint report that had not been turned over to Irons’ defense team, according to The New York Times.

The Missouri attorney general’s office unsuccessfully appealed the judge’s decision, and the lead prosecutor in St. Charles County decided against a retrial.

Moore and Irons became friends after meeting through prison ministry, according to the Times. The 31-year-old Moore, a Jefferson City, Missouri, native who starred at UConn before helping lead Minnesota to four WNBA titles, put her career on hold last season to help Irons.

Moore said in January she planned to sit out a second season and miss the Tokyo Olympics. After Irons’ convictions were thrown out in March, she told the AP her plans hadn’t changed.