Civic Association of the Deaf of New York City, Inc. v. Rudolph Giuliani, et al. is a federal class action lawsuit originally filed in 1995 by an organization of deaf and hard of hearing New Yorkers.  The Americans with Disabilities Act case asked the court to block a plan by the City of New York to remove fire alarm boxes from city streets which deaf and hard of hearing people can use to call for emergency assistance from the street. The city’s proposed alternative of pay telephones is inaccessible to the deaf and hard of hearing. In February 1996 the court ruled in favor of the Civic Association plaintiffs, and certified the case as a class action. In July 1997 the court issued a ruling that the city restore structural alterations made to boxes which violated the 1996 injunction, and in January 2000 issued a final Judgment.

In 2010 the City filed a motion asking Judge Sweet to end the injunction and permit the City to remove the accessible street alarm box system. The City claimed that Deaf and hard of hearing persons can use public pay telephones to report an emergency from the street, using a tapping code first developed in the 1970s for street fire alarm boxes. The City also asserted that street alarm boxes are costly and result in many false alarms. The Civic Association of the Deaf Class argued that the City’s plan to remove the alarm boxes and require Deaf and hard of hearing people to use public pay phones to report emergencies from the street still violates the ADA. The motion was argued in Judge Sweet’s courtroom at the Federal Courthouse in Manhattan on Friday, June 3, 2011.  On August 15, 2011, the court ruled in favor of the Civic Association of the Deaf.

The case, in which a certified class of Deaf and hard of hearing people were represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the law firm of Broach & Stulberg, LLP, established the important principle under Title II of the ADA (which regulates services to the public by state and local governments) that, when government changes an existing public service, the changes must not discriminate against people with disabilities. The 1996 and 1997 rulings resulted in Judge Sweet’s permanent federal court injunction issued in January 2000, prohibiting removal of the alarm box system.