A federal appeals court ruled (PDF) yesterday that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) doesn't apply to Netflix, since the online video provider is "not connected to any actual, physical place."

Donald Cullen sued Netflix in March 2011, attempting to kick off a class-action lawsuit on behalf of disabled people who didn't have full use of the videos because they aren't all captioned. A district court judge threw out his lawsuit in 2013, and yesterday's ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upholds that decision.

The decision is "unpublished," meaning it isn't intended to be used as precedent in other cases. However, it certainly doesn't bode well for any plaintiff thinking about filing a similar case in the 9th Circuit, which covers most of the Western US.

At least one other court has come out the other way on this issue. Three months after Cullen filed suit, the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) filed an ADA lawsuit against Netflix in Massachusetts over the same issue. In that case, the judge found that Netflix was a "place of public accommodation" and would have to face the lawsuit against the disability rights group.

After the company lost the initial motion, Netflix settled the case with NAD, agreeing to pay $750,000 in legal fees and caption all of its videos by the year 2014.

While online captioning may be a done deal for Netflix, NAD has continued to litigate the matter. In February, the group sued Harvard and MIT over their free online course offerings, saying the lack of captions constitutes an ADA violation.

Despite significant wins by NAD and other disabled advocates, yesterday's decision in Cullen v. Netflix shows that judges are far from unanimous in believing that the ADA can be wielded as a tool to regulate the Internet.