CPA Review Firm Settles Bias Case : Laws: Encino company agrees to allow hearing-impaired students the right to demand interpreters.

After nearly 18 months of fighting and mounting legal bills, Newton Becker, whose company runs the nation’s largest review course for certified accountant candidates, has surrendered.

His Ventura Boulevard-based firm, Becker CPA Review, gained unwanted notoriety in December, 1992, when it became the target of the first lawsuit filed by the U. S. Justice Department to enforce the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act. The suit accused the company of discriminating against hearing-impaired students.

But earlier this month, he agreed to a Justice Department consent order that gives hearing-impaired students in his classes the right to demand sign language interpreters or other aids of their choice.

In addition, his company must establish a $25,000 scholarship fund for hearing-impaired accounting students at Cal State Northridge, pay $20,000 for the group of seven Becker students named in the case, and follow an elaborate set of guidelines for dealing with hearing-impaired students through mid-1997.

For other private schools and educational programs, the outcome is a signal that one-size-fits-all approaches to accommodating the disabled may no longer be acceptable. To federal attorneys and advocates for the disabled, the outcome is a reasonable response to the law’s broad goals of equal access.

To an unhappy Becker, however, it means the prospect of having to spend up to $9,000 per deaf student (admittedly a tiny percentage of his clientele) on interpreters for a program that charges only about $1,300 in tuition. “I don’t think this was the intent of Congress,” he said.

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Underneath all the wrangling, the case came down to a relatively simple dispute: Becker originally wanted to continue his company’s longstanding practice of giving deaf students transcripts of his own tape-recorded lectures that account for most of the 130-hour program.

Federal attorneys argued that hearing-impaired students were deprived of the equal learning experience required by law because, along with other problems, they could not hear the non-scripted comments of course instructors and question-and-answer sessions during the classes.

In the end, the government prevailed with its approach that private educational programs must tailor their assistance to meet the specific needs of disabled students, although a federal judge along the way suggested that the government’s demands of Becker went beyond the law.

“You can’t expect one type of aid to work for everybody,” said Irene Bowen, deputy chief of the Justice Department’s public access section, which handles enforcement of the law. “The problem here was Mr. Becker had determined the transcripts were enough for everybody.”

Although lacking the same legal weight as a court ruling, the settlement will have a broad impact. The 37-year-old company, founded and headed by Becker, offers its courses at about 130 locations nationwide, and claims thousands of people passing the CPA test each year are its alumni.

Nearly four years after then-President George Bush signed the ADA into law and 2 1/2 years after it went into effect, the Becker lawsuit is one of six filed by the Justice Department, Bowen said. Three, including Becker’s, have now been settled, and three others are pending, she said.

The law guarantees equal opportunities to people with disabilities, mental or physical, and including those with the human immunodeficiency virus, in employment, state and local government services, transportation and in dealing with a wide range of business locations that serve the public.

The latter category, “public accommodations,” includes lodgings, food-and-drink outlets, movie theaters and other similar venues, stores, service locations such as doctor’s and attorney’s offices, recreational facilities and all private schools.

Under the law, such locations are required to provide “auxiliary aids and services” if needed by disabled people to have equal access, unless doing so would “fundamentally alter” the activity or result in “an undue burden.” Those aids and services can be structural changes or assistants such as interpreters.

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Becker, a 66-year-old Bel-Air resident, argued that in the past, deaf students in his courses had been successful using the transcripts. But the Justice Department filed the case after a WashingtonC.-area deaf man, Rod Jex, sought and was denied an interpreter in mid-1992. As a result of Jex’s complaint, the Justice Department filed suit in December, 1992.

Under the settlement, Becker’s company must provide any extras for students with hearing impairments at no added charge for at least the three-year term of the settlement. It also requires extensive staff training, reports to federal officials and publicity about the new policies.

More than the potential cost of the interpreters, Becker said his gripe is one of principle, over what he calls an unclear law that invites legal disputes. “What’s really needed is clarification of the law so it will make sense and people can abide by it,” he said.

Under ADA regulations, written texts are one permitted method for accommodating the hearing-impaired. That was one of Becker’s main arguments. But federal attorneys said his four-hour class sessions and their complex subject matter demanded additional measures.

Becker said the legal fight cost him more than $200,000 in legal fees, and would have cost that much again had he tried to take the case to trial. He did, however, get some support from U. S. District Judge Thomas Hogan in a hearing on the case in December in Washington.

According to the transcript, Hogan questioned the Justice Department’s “rush to judgment” in filing the case while settlement talks were continuing. And the judge challenged the department’s stance in the case that Becker must provide the particular aid demanded by hearing-impaired students.

“That is not what the regulation says. That is not what the statute says,” the judge said, according to the transcript. Although he did not rule for either side that day, Hogan did say he saw no basis for “substantial, if any, damages against Becker for any alleged violations.”