(a) As a PVO, you must not do any of the following things, either directly or through a contractual, licensing, or other arrangement:

(1) You must not discriminate against any qualified individual with a disability, by reason of such disability, with respect to the individual's use of a vessel;

(2) You must not require a qualified individual with a disability to accept special services that the individual does not request;

(3) You must not exclude a qualified individual with a disability from or deny the person the benefit of any vessel transportation or related services that are available to other persons, except when specifically permitted by another section of this Part; and

(4) You must not take any action against an individual (e.g., refusing to provide transportation) because the individual asserts, on his or her own behalf or through or on behalf of others, rights protected by this part or the ADA.

(b)(1) As a PVO that is a private entity, you must make reasonable modifications in policies, practices, or procedures when such modifications are necessary to afford such goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations to individuals with disabilities, unless you can demonstrate that making such modifications would fundamentally alter the nature of such goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations.

(2) As a PVO that is a public entity, you must make reasonable modifications in policies, practices, or procedures when necessary to avoid discrimination on the basis of disability, unless you can demonstrate that making the modifications would fundamentally alter the nature of the services, programs, or activities you offer.

(a) If, as a PVO, you enter into a contractual or other arrangement or relationship with any other party to provide services to or affecting passengers, you must ensure that the other party meets the requirements of this Part that would apply to you if you provided the service yourself.

(b) As a PVO, you must include an assurance of compliance with this Part in your contracts or agreements with any contractors who provide to the public services that are subject to the requirements of this Part. Noncompliance with this assurance is a material breach of the contract on the contractor's part. With respect to contracts or agreements existing on November 3, 2010, you must ensure the inclusion of this assurance by November 3, 2011 or on the next occasion on which the contract or agreement is renewed or amended, whichever comes first.

(1) This assurance must commit the contractor to compliance with all applicable provisions of this Part in activities performed on behalf of the PVO.

(2) The assurance must also commit the contractor to implementing directives issued by your Complaints Resolution Officials (CROs) under § 39.103.

(c) As a PVO, you must also include such an assurance of compliance in your contracts or agreements of appointment with U.S. travel agents. With respect to contracts or agreements with U.S. travel agents existing on November 3, 2010, you must ensure the inclusion of this assurance by November 3, 2011 or on the next occasion on which the contract or agreement is renewed or amended, whichever comes first. You are not required to include such an assurance in contracts with foreign travel agents.

(d) You remain responsible for your contractors' and U.S. travel agents' compliance with this part and with the assurances in your contracts with them.

(e) It is not a defense to an enforcement action under this Part that your noncompliance resulted from action or inaction by a contractor or U.S. travel agent.

(a) As a PVO, you must not refuse to provide transportation or use of a vessel to a passenger with a disability on the basis of his or her disability, except as specifically permitted by this Part.

(b) You must not refuse to provide transportation or use of a vessel to a passenger with a disability because the person's disability results in appearance or involuntary behavior that may offend, annoy, or inconvenience crewmembers or other passengers.

(c) If you refuse to provide transportation or use of a vessel to a passenger on a basis relating to the individual's disability, you must provide to the person a written statement of the reason for the refusal. This statement must include the specific basis for your opinion that the refusal meets the standards of § 39.27 or is otherwise specifically permitted by this part. You must provide this written statement to the person within 10 calendar days of the refusal of transportation or use of the vessel.

(a) As a PVO, you may take action to deny transportation or restrict services to a passenger with a disability if necessitated by legitimate safety requirements. Safety requirements must be based on actual risks and not on mere speculation, stereotypes, or generalizations about individuals with disabilities.

(b) In taking action pursuant to legitimate safety requirements, you must take the action that imposes the minimum feasible burdens or limitations from the point of view of the passenger. For example, if you can meet legitimate safety requirements by a means short of refusing transportation to a passenger, you must do so.

(c) You may take action to deny transportation or restrict services to a passenger if the passenger poses a direct threat to others. In determining whether an individual poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others, the PVO must make an individualized assessment, based on reasonable judgment that relies on current medical knowledge or on the best available objective evidence, to ascertain: The nature, duration, and severity of the risk; the probability that the potential injury will actually occur; and whether reasonable modifications of policies, practices, or procedures will mitigate the risk.

As a PVO, you must not limit the number of passengers with a disability other than individuals with a mobility disability on your vessel. However, if in the Captain's judgment, weight or stability issues are presented by the presence of mobility devices and would conflict with legitimate safety requirements pertaining to the vessel and its passengers, then the number of passengers with mobility aids may be limited, but only to the extent reasonable to prevent a avoid such a conflict.

(a) You must not take any of the following actions on the basis that a passenger has a communicable disease or infection, unless one of the conditions of paragraph (b) of this section exists:

(1) Refuse to provide transportation or use of a vessel to the passenger;

(2) Delay the passenger's transportation or use of the vessel (e.g., require the passenger to take a later trip);

(3) Impose on the passenger any condition, restriction, or requirement not imposed on other passengers; or

(4) Require the passenger to provide a medical certificate.

(b) You may take actions listed in paragraph (a) of this section only if either or both of the conditions listed in paragraphs (b)(1) and (2) of this section are met. The action you take must be the least restrictive from the point of view of the passenger, consistent with protecting the health of other passengers.

(1) U.S. or international public health authorities (e.g., the Centers for Disease Control, Public Health Service, World Health Organization) have determined that persons with a particular condition should not be permitted to travel or should travel only under conditions specified by the public health authorities;

(2) An individual has a condition that is both readily transmissible by casual contact in the context of traveling on or using a passenger vessel and has serious health consequences.

(c) Any action of those listed in paragraph (a) of this section that you take under paragraph (b) of this section must be the least drastic action you can take to protect the health of other passengers. For example, if you can protect the health of other passenger by imposing a condition on the transportation of a passenger with a communicable disease (e.g., limiting the passenger's access to certain facilities on the vessel for a period of time), you cannot totally deny transportation on the vessel.

(d) For purposes of paragraph (a)(4) of this section, a medical certificate is a written statement from the passenger's physician saying that the passenger's disease or infection would not, under the present conditions in the particular passenger's case, be readily communicable to other persons by casual contact during the normal course of the passenger's transportation or use of the vessel. Such a medical certificate must state any conditions or precautions that would have to be observed to prevent the transmission of the disease or infection to other persons in the normal course of the passenger's transportation on or use of the vessel. It must be sufficiently recent to pertain directly to the communicable disease presented by the passenger at the time the passenger seeks to board the vessel.

(e) If your action under this section results in the postponement of a passenger's transportation or use of the vessel, you must permit the passenger to travel or use the vessel at a later available time (up to one year from the date of the postponed trip or use of the vessel) at the cost that would have applied to the passenger's originally scheduled trip or use of the vessel without penalty or, at the passenger's discretion, provide a refund for any unused transportation or use of the vessel. If there is no available reservation within one year, you must provide a refund.

(f) If you take any action under this section that restricts a passenger's transportation or use of the vessel, you must, on the passenger's request, provide a written explanation within 10 days of the request.

Except as provided in § 39.31, you must not require a passenger with a disability to have a medical certificate as a condition for being provided transportation on your vessel.

As a PVO, you must not require a passenger with a disability to provide advance notice of the fact that he or she is traveling on or using a passenger vessel when the passenger is not seeking particular auxiliary aids or services, or special privileges or services, that in order to be provided need to be arranged before the passenger arrives to board the vessel. The PVO always has an obligation to provide effective communication between the PVO and individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing or blind or visually impaired through the use of appropriate auxiliary aids and services.

(a) Except as provided in this section, as a PVO you must not require a passenger with a disability to provide advance notice in order to obtain services or privileges required by this Part.

(b) If 10 or more passengers with a disability seek to travel as a group, you may require 72 hours advance notice for the group's travel.

(c) With respect to providing particular auxiliary aids and services, you may request reasonable advance notice to guarantee the availability of those aids or services.

(d) Your reservation and other administrative systems must ensure that when passengers provide the advance notice that you require, consistent with this section, for services and privileges, the notice is communicated, clearly and on time, to the people responsible for providing the requested service or accommodation.

(a) As a PVO operating a vessel that has accessible cabins, you must follow the requirements of this Part to ensure that passengers with disabilities who need accessible cabins have nondiscriminatory access to them.

(b) You must, with respect to reservations made by any means (e.g., telephone, Internet, in person, or through a third party):

(1) Modify your policies, practices, or procedures to ensure that individuals with disabilities can make reservations for accessible cabins during the same hours and in the same manner as individuals who do not need accessible cabins;

(2) Identify and describe accessible features in the cabins offered through your reservations service in enough detail to permit individuals with disabilities to assess independently whether a given cabin meets his or her accessibility needs.

(3) Ensure that accessible cabins are held for use by individuals with disabilities until all other cabins in that class of service have been rented;

(4) Reserve accessible cabins upon request by a passenger with disabilities and ensure that the specific accessible cabin reserved by that passenger is held for him or her, even you do not normally hold specific cabins for passengers who make reservations.

(c) You may release unsold accessible cabins to persons without disabilities for their own use when all other cabins in the same class of service and price for a voyage have been reserved.

(d) If a passenger with a disability seeks to reserve an accessible cabin in a given class of service, and there is not an available accessible cabin in that class of service, but there is an available accessible cabin in a different class of service, you must allow the passenger to reserve that accessible cabin at the price of the requested class of service of the class of service in which the accessible cabin exists, whichever is lower.

(e) As a PVO, you are never required to deny transportation to any passenger who has already reserved passage in order to accommodate a passenger with a disability in an accessible cabin.

(f) You must not require proof of disability, including, for example, a doctor's note, before reserving an accessible cabin.

(g) To prevent fraud in the assignment of accessible cabins (e.g., attempts by individuals who do not have disabilities to reserve accessible cabins because they have greater space, you—

(1) Must inquire of persons seeking to reserve such cabins whether the individual (or an individual for whom the cabin is being reserved) has a mobility disability or a disability that requires the use of the accessible features that are provided in the cabin.

(2) May require a written attestation from the individual that accessible cabin is for a person who has a mobility disability or a disability that requires the use of the accessible features that are provided in the cabin.

(h) You must investigate the potential misuse of accessible cabins where there is good cause to believe that such cabins have been purchased fraudulently, and you may take appropriate action against someone who has reserved or purchased such a cabin fraudulently. For example, if an individual who does not have a disability reserves an accessible cabin, after having attested that he or she has a mobility disability, you may deny transportation to the individual.

(a) You must not require that a passenger with a disability travel with another person as a condition of being provided transportation on or use of a passenger vessel.

(b) Your personnel are not required to perform personal tasks (e.g., assisting with eating, dressing, toileting) for a passenger.

(a) As a PVO, you must not charge higher fares, surcharges, or other fees to passengers with a disability that are not imposed on other passengers for transportation or use of the vessel.

(b) If the accommodations on a vessel that are accessible to passengers with a disability are available only in a type or class of service or part of a vessel that are more expensive than the type or class of service or part of a vessel that the passenger requests, you must provide the accessible accommodation at the price of the type or class of service or facility that the passenger requests.

(c) You must not impose special or extra charges for providing facilities, equipment, or services that this rule requires to be provided to passengers with a disability.

(a) As a PVO, you must not subject passengers with a disability to restrictions that do not apply to other passengers, except as otherwise explicitly permitted in this part.

(b) Restrictions you must not impose on passengers with a disability include, but are not limited to, the following:

(1) Restricting passengers' movement within the vessel or a terminal;

(2) Requiring passengers to remain in a holding area or other location in order to receive transportation or services;

(3) [Reserved]

(4) Requiring passengers to wear badges or other special identification; or

(5) Requiring ambulatory passengers, including but not limited to blind or visually impaired passengers, to use a wheelchair or other mobility device in order to receive assistance required by this Part or otherwise offered to the passenger.

(c) Special muster stations for disabled individuals are permissible for emergency evacuations in order to centrally locate available resources.

(a) As a PVO, you must not require passengers with a disability to sign any release or waiver of liability not required of all passengers in order to receive transportation or use of a vessel or to receive services relating to a disability.

(b) You must not require passengers with a disability to sign waivers of liability for damage to or loss of wheelchairs or other mobility or assistive devices.