Guess which piece of liberal-do-gooding may be at fault for bringing to an end the free steak dinners a famed Washington D.C. eatery was giving each week for wounded war veterans. That’s right, the Americans with Disabilities Act. The restaurant is Fran O’Brien’s Steakhouse, which has been making this wonderful gesture for wounded GIs, many of them amputees, from Walter Reed army hospital every week for some two and a half years. But Hilton is refusing to renew the restaurant’s lease and given Fran’s, a Washington institution for decades, until May 1 to leave.

The hotel is tightlipped about the reasons for the decision – a spokeswoman did not return our call for comment – but some are starting to suspect the Hilton has been scared off by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The restaurant sits in the basement of the hotel and is accessed via either of two staircases. If neither of these is feasible for a patron in a wheelchair, the only alternative is the hotel’s supply elevator, accessed via a locked coatroom at the lobby level and a long L-shaped hallway in the basement.

Veterans attending the free dinners have never actually complained about the accessibility problems, a co-owner of Fran’s, Hal Koster, told us when we stopped by recently. But as part of an on-again, off-again lease negotiation, the restaurant eventually asked the hotel to make the facility ADA-compliant. At about that time, negotiations seem to have ended. The hotel and the restaurant exchanged letters about the conditions under which each party would be willing to renew (the hotel wanted a new carpet and a refinished bar, for example), most of which the restaurant was willing to fulfill. The only bone of contention, apart from handicap access, appears to have been whether to upgrade or replace the wonderful booths once enjoyed over the years by the likes of President Nixon.

The thinking among some of the restaurant’s supporters seems to be that the landlord, given the potential burden of a suit under the ADA (although as far as anyone knows, no one has threatened such a suit at this point), figures it would be cheaper to evict a famous steakhouse and let prime commercial space in the heart of Washington lie fallow. The last any of the parties knew, Hilton has budgeted money in 2007 to install a lift, after which it will likely re-lease the space, although Fran’s may be installed in a new home by then.

We’re sympathetic to the restaurateurs, not to mention the vets, in their desire for an accessible restaurant, but there’s got to be a better way than the ADA to accomplish that. Instead, the ADA makes it financially safer for the hotel to evict the restaurant and leave its location empty than to allow Fran’s to operate in the interim. Another local hotel has agreed to host the veterans’ dinners, and although they’re grateful to their new hosts, the guests will miss the sports bar feel of Fran’s. If it turns out that it was the ADA that put an end to Fran’s great tradition, it’s one of the most ironical results in the history of do-gooding.