Plaintiff Alleges RF Exposure From American Tower, AT&T, T-Mobile Triggered Her Strokes

American Tower, AT&T and T-Mobile “could easily and with minimal cost” take action to modify their facilities to end plaintiff Marcia Haller’s “debilitating symptoms” while allowing her to still use their telecommunications services, alleged Haller's Americans With Disabilities Act complaint Monday (docket 0:24-cv-00877) in U.S. District Court for Minnesota in Duluth.

Haller could suffer “life-threatening embolic strokes” due to exposure to certain levels of RF radiation or to RF energy that’s manipulated using certain types of pulsation or modulation, said the complaint. She has been diagnosed with autoimmune cerebral arteritis, for which she receives immunosuppressive agents, and her condition meets the definition of a disability under the ADA, it said. Haller’s physical impairments “already limit major life activities,” and RF exposure exacerbates her condition, it said.

American Tower, AT&T and T-Mobile operate a wireless transmitter about 900 feet from Haller’s Gnesen, Minnesota, home that has already “triggered and will trigger adverse symptoms” and “adverse medical events,” further aggravating her disability, the complaint said. The levels of RF exposure in Haller’s home “have the potential to cause and have caused or at least contributed to new strokes and exacerbate the deficits caused by past strokes,” it said. RF exposure is known to cause and exacerbate cognitive impairment, it said.

Haller first experienced “severe, disabling symptoms” immediately after the American Tower site and antennas were upgraded in October 2019, the complaint said. After the tower upgrade was complete, she made numerous trips to urgent care and emergency rooms for symptoms, including vertigo, a “disturbing pressure in her head,” lightheadedness, dizziness and nausea, before she was admitted to the hospital several days later with “suspected embolic stroke,” it said. Strokes continued, and Haller was referred to the Mayo Clinic, where she spent months, cumulatively, hospitalized, it said.

By March 2020, Haller had suffered multiple strokes, vision and hearing loss, headaches, sleep disruption, chronic fatigue and cognitive impairment, forcing her to live at her parents’ home, where she suffered no strokes March-October 2020, the complaint said. When she returned to her own home, the symptoms described returned, it said. Haller consulted with a “professional building biologist” who recommended construction of a “Faraday Cage” to block RF signals, and Haller now stays largely confined to the “small, 'Faraday Cage’ in the garage,” though she can walk around the home temporarily, it said. She also recently began wearing “RF-insulated head gear,” it said.

Haller lives with discomfort and uncertainty that she is risking another stroke as she goes about daily life, said the complaint. She has experienced 51 strokes since the tower upgrade in 2019, and the RF emitted by the antennas at the tower site threatens Haller’s life, it said. Her family can’t readily sell their home and move to another location far from an RF-transmitting facility, it said.

Despite Haller’s request that the defendants make “reasonable accommodations” or modifications to their facilities, they “have failed to respond” to her request, said the complaint. Haller “tailored her request” for accommodation in a way that would allow them to “remain compliant with their obligations and requirements” under federal communications laws and without fundamentally altering their services, it said. On information and belief, American Tower, AT&T and T-Mobile “believe they are exempt from the disabilities laws and owe no duty” to Haller, it said.

Appeals courts “are split” on whether the statutory reference under the ADA to a “place” in the definition of “public accommodation” refers to an actual physical structure or whether Congress had a “broader intent to make goods, services, privileges, and advantages available to disabled members of society even if only delivered ‘virtually,’" said the complaint. The defendants operate and control physical facilities to deliver their services, “and this meets the test for 'place’" applied by district courts in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the complaint said, citing Hutcheson v. JPMorgan Chase Bank .

The defendants don’t just have websites that customers visit virtually when using the internet, but they also operate physical structures and facilities necessary to provide service, the complaint said. Customers access the defendants’ physical network to access their service using smartphones and other devices to establish a "physical and logical connection” to the telecom service providers’ (TSP) network, including American Tower’s tower, it said.

Informational content is exchanged between a customer’s device and the network using physical energy in the form of RF, the complaint said. Customers enter the network, “much as a customer would walk through a door to obtain and use a more traditional service, go to a ‘motion picture house, theater, concert hall, stadium, or other place of exhibition or entertainment,’” or a museum, park, convention center or other place of public gathering, it said. The TSPs provide “the physical network used to access these other services, many of which the Defendant TSPs also provide,” it said.

Town officials have stated publicly that they would like to help protect public health from RF signals but were advised that on the subject of RF local zoning, authorities are “preempted by federal law,” said the complaint. The Gnesen community doesn’t depend on the tower or antennas for communications capabilities, including internet, it said. The town received grants for high-speed internet construction that's set to begin in summer, “which further renders the Tower and Antennas unnecessary for broadband delivered to residences,” the complaint said.

The tower and antennas in question are primarily for wireless-based video streaming, “which is more lucrative than video delivery on a wired basis but also far less efficient and more destructive," the complaint said. A new Gnesen local ordinance requires a minimum 1,500 feet from a tower to a residence, it said.

Haller requests a declaratory judgment that the ADA's Title III applies to defendants’ operation of the equipment at the tower site; that their “acts and omissions in declining to engage” in good faith violated the ADA; that Haller is entitled to a remedy that will allow her to access public accommodation services without being injured by them; and that their actions discriminated against her. She also seeks an order requiring defendants to comply with her request for reasonable accommodation and to enjoin them from further discrimination, plus attorneys’ fees and costs. "We dispute the allegations in this lawsuit and will fight it in court," an AT&T spokesperson emailed Tuesday: "We operate our equipment within the conservative limits set by" the FCC. American Tower and T-Mobile didn't comment.