ADA website lawsuits in 2026: the law is still unsettled, and the filings keep coming

Ask a lawyer whether the ADA covers your website and you will get a careful answer, because the law has not settled. Ask how many businesses were sued over their websites last year and the answer is plain. Seyfarth Shaw, a defense firm that reviews federal filings by hand, counted 3,117 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2025, up 27% from 2024. Those cases were 36% of the 8,667 ADA Title III suits filed in federal court that year, a total that also includes physical access claims.

Federal court is only part of the picture. Trackers that also follow state courts count more. EcomBack, which sells accessibility services, counted 3,948 website suits in 2025. UsableNet, also a vendor, counted 5,114 digital accessibility suits across federal courts and New York and California state courts. The totals differ because each tracker watches a different set of courts. Every one of them went up in 2025.

Federal ADA filings as a whole kept climbing in 2026. Seyfarth counted 5,006 Title III suits from January to June, 9% more than the same months of 2025. That count covers every kind of Title III case. No independent website-only count for 2026 exists yet, and Seyfarth's full-year website tally usually arrives in the spring.

Is a website a place of public accommodation?

Title III of the ADA covers "places of public accommodation," a phrase written in 1990 with stores and restaurants in mind. The Supreme Court has never said whether a website counts. In 2019 the Ninth Circuit held in Robles v. Domino's Pizza that the ADA reached Domino's website and app because they connected customers to its physical restaurants, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. Robles is a nexus holding. The site was covered through its link to a physical place.

No federal appeals court has held that a website with no physical location behind it is covered on its own. The Eleventh Circuit ruled the other way in Gil v. Winn-Dixie in April 2021, holding that a website is not itself a public accommodation. It then vacated that opinion as moot on December 28, 2021, so the ruling binds no one.

District courts have filled the gap, and they disagree. In Pennsylvania, Murphy v. Spongelle (W.D. Pa., January 2024) and Wilkins v. Gold N' Diamonds (E.D. Pa., January 2025) dismissed claims against online sellers that had no tie to a physical place. In Manhattan, Chief Judge Swain held in Mejia v. High Brew Coffee (S.D.N.Y., September 2024) that a stand-alone website is not a place of public accommodation, though other judges in that court have disagreed. In Minnesota, Frost v. Lion Brand Yarn (D. Minn., February 2025) went the other way and treated a web store as a sales establishment covered by Title III.

For a business with a storefront, an office or a dining room, this debate offers little help. A connection to a physical location is easy to plead, and it is the theory Robles accepted.

Standing got harder in New York

The sharper defense lately has been standing. In Calcano v. Swarovski (2022), the Second Circuit rejected boilerplate claims that a plaintiff intended to return to a business, calling them Mad-Libs-style. New York federal judges have since applied that reasoning to website cases. In 2025 a Manhattan judge ordered an evidentiary hearing into a plaintiff accused of trying to buy dozens of products in a single week, and a Brooklyn judge dismissed another case without leave to amend.

The Supreme Court left the national question open. In Acheson Hotels v. Laufer (2023) it dismissed a tester standing case as moot and did not decide whether a plaintiff who never means to visit a business may sue it.

What DOJ has and has not said

There is still no Department of Justice regulation setting a web standard for private businesses under Title III. DOJ's 2022 guidance gives businesses flexibility in how they make a site accessible and mandates no technical standard. In February 2026, in a statement of interest opposing a proposed class settlement in Alcazar v. Fashion Nova, DOJ went further. A footnote said the United States "does not endorse WCAG" as the required Title III standard.

Government websites are on a separate track. DOJ's 2024 Title II rule requires WCAG 2.1 Level AA for state and local government sites, and an April 2026 interim final rule moved the deadlines to April 26, 2027 for entities serving 50,000 or more people and April 26, 2028 for smaller entities and special districts. That rule binds public entities only. Businesses that sell into Europe answer to the European Accessibility Act, which has applied since June 28, 2025, and whose harmonized standard builds on WCAG.

For a private US website, then, WCAG is a benchmark rather than a written Title III rule. Courts, settlements and the government rules all point to it, and it is the yardstick a complaint uses to describe what is broken.

Plaintiffs changed venue

The defense wins changed where suits are filed more than how many. Seyfarth ties falling New York federal filings to the tougher standing rules and reports plaintiffs moving to New York state court. California website suits have mostly left federal court for state court, where the Unruh Civil Rights Act sets minimum damages of $4,000 per violation, though a 2022 California appeals decision limits those claims against online-only businesses. Florida and Illinois led the 2025 federal increase.

A small, organized plaintiff bar can move quickly. EcomBack found that 16 law firms filed 90.4% of 2025 website suits. When one court gets harder, those firms file in another.

Settling or installing a widget did not end exposure

UsableNet reports that 45% of 2025 federal digital accessibility suits targeted companies that had already been sued. A settlement resolves one plaintiff's case. If the site stays as it was, the next plaintiff can file over the same barriers.

Overlay widgets have a similar record. EcomBack counted 983 website suits in 2025, 24.9% of its total, against sites already running an accessibility widget or overlay. UsableNet's count was 1,416. In April 2025 the FTC announced a $1 million order against an overlay provider over claims that its product could make sites compliant. The order is about advertising claims. It is still a useful reminder that a script running on top of a page leaves the code underneath as it was.

What a documented fix does

Legal defenses lower the odds of losing a case. They do little about the odds of being sued, because a complaint gets filed before any of those arguments is heard. The step that changes a business's position is fixing the site itself.

Courts have treated a real fix as meaningful. In April 2026 Seyfarth reported a website case dismissed as moot on unrebutted evidence that the site had been made accessible. Mootness is never automatic. A defendant has to show the barriers are gone and are unlikely to return. A fix made in the source code, with a record of what changed and when, is the kind of evidence that can support that argument. It also leaves a second plaintiff far less to cite.

Where RemediADA fits

RemediADA checks a site against the 55 WCAG 2.2 Level A and AA success criteria, fixes failures in the source code through your platform, and keeps a record of every change. See how many accessibility issues your homepage has, highlighted on the page. Free, about a minute. The full report with fixes comes with a paid audit.