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The New Public Accommodations

SSRN Electronic JournalPublished 1 January 2015Open access
Nancy Leong
Citations24
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Abstract

The platform economy raises important new questions about public accommodation laws. Such laws originally were enacted to prohibit establishments open to the public-for example, hotels, restaurants, taxi services, and retail businesses-from discriminating on the basis of characteristics such as race, color, religion, and national origin. Platform economy businesses are functional substitutes for these traditional public accommodations. Yet existing public accommodation laws are not always a good fit for the unique features of the platform economy.

Keywords

Economics, Econometrics and Finance