Blind Man Says He Was Discriminated Against and Kept Off Jury Because He Couldn't See Video Evidence

A blind New York lawyer has filed a lawsuit against the state after he alleges he was barred from serving on a jury last October because he was blind.

The civil rights lawsuit, filed last week by attorney Albert Elia and the National Federation of the Blind of New York State, comes after the 50-year-old New York attorney alleges a Brooklyn judge would not allow him to use visual aids in reviewing video evidence.

Elia says in the filing that he typically either has someone describe video evidence out loud to him or he uses an app that “generates descriptions of photos” for him. The judge then allegedly denied Elia the ability to use either the app or enlist the assistance of another person, and said Elia could not serve on the jury because he “needed to be able to perceive the evidence with his own senses.”

The court then allegedly kept Elia around to possibly deliberate on another case, but none that involved “photographic or videographic evidence,” according to the civil filing. The lawsuit then alleges that after returning to the Brooklyn court a second day to attempt to find a case he would be allowed to serve on, Elia was “excused.”

Elia, a disability rights attorney who graduated from Harvard and then Northeastern University, claims he “was excluded from full participation in grand jury service because of his blindness and denied the accommodations that would allow him to serve,” according to the lawsuit.

“Juror service is one of the most important civic duties in a democracy, and in New York, it is a civil right,” Victoria Pilger, a staff attorney at the Disability Rights Advocates organization, said in a press release about Elia’s filing. “Federal law requires courts to ensure no person is excluded from jury service on the basis of their disability.”

A spokesperson for the New York State Unified Court System told PEOPLE on Monday morning that he “cannot comment on the facts of this particular case, but there is no prohibition against blind or visually impaired individuals serving on grand juries and, depending on particular circumstances, reasonable accommodations for such individuals can be made.”

Elia’s lawsuit specifically accuses the New York court system of “failing to reasonably accommodate or provide” aids as well as “failing to have any policies or procedures in place with respect to assistive technology for blind jurors.”

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The lawsuit says it hopes “to remedy the systemic discrimination” against “blind individuals who report for jury duty each year, entirely capable of fulfilling their civic duty as jurors.”

In the filing, Elia’s attorney says he’s filing the lawsuit in order to increase the “inclusion of individuals with disabilities” and to remove “accessibility barriers not just for his own sake, but for the sake of the broader disability community.”