ADA website lawsuits: numbers, trends and settlements (2026)

Seyfarth Shaw, a law firm that defends these cases, has counted federal website suits since 2017. Its count is the longest running series, so it is the best way to see the trend. Website cases were 36% of all 8,667 federal ADA Title III suits in 2025, up from 28% in 2024.

The 2025 rise of 665 cases took the count back close to the 2022 peak of 3,255. Seyfarth puts part of it down to new plaintiff law firms and notes that these suits are easy to file because the plaintiff “don't even need to leave their homes” (March 25, 2026).

Three trackers publish numbers that the press repeats. They count different things, so their totals never match. Use one tracker at a time, and do not add them up.

None of them counts demand letters (a letter from a law firm asking for money before any suit is filed). Letters are believed to be far more common than suits, but nobody publishes a reliable count, so we do not give one.

The first half of 2026 shows five clear changes.

• Volume is steady to rising. EcomBack counted 2,045 website suits from January to June 2026, up 1.54% on 2,014 a year earlier. Seyfarth counted 5,006 federal Title III suits of every kind, up 9%, and says the full year could pass 10,000. UsableNet projects more than 6,000 digital accessibility suits for 2026.
• Shopify stores are the main target. Shopify sites were 952 of the 2,045 suits (46.55%), up from 653 in the first half of 2025 (EcomBack).
• Illinois has taken the lead. EcomBack put Illinois first with 463 suits, up 95.36%. Seyfarth says one firm, Equal Access Law Group, filed 336 of the 505 federal Title III suits in Illinois.
• New York federal filings keep falling. EcomBack counted 399 New York suits, down 37.36%. Federal judges there now look harder at whether the plaintiff really tried to shop, and Seyfarth says this may be pushing plaintiffs into state court.
• Widgets are not slowing suits. 496 suits (24.25%) named sites that already had an accessibility widget installed (EcomBack).

A suit can be filed in any state where a court can hear a case against you, and that can include states you ship to. So where your business is based matters less than where the busy plaintiff firms work.

California shows why the two columns differ. Federal courts there had only 4 new website suits in 2025, because the ADA gives no damages and federal courts in California have held that online-only businesses are not covered by the ADA. Plaintiffs file in state court instead, under the Unruh Act. Read more in our guide to the Unruh Act and online stores.

New York was the busiest federal venue for years, peaking at 2,560 federal website suits in 2022. Our page on New York ADA website lawsuits explains why, and why filings there are moving to state court.

Mostly online stores and restaurants, of every size. UsableNet found that 69% of digital accessibility suits in the first half of 2025 were against e-commerce sites, and that only 36% of businesses sued had more than $25 million in annual revenue (August 4, 2025).

A small number of firms file most suits

EcomBack found that 16 law firms filed 90.35% of the 3,948 suits in 2025, and the top five filed 60.21%. The same names come back again and again: 33 plaintiffs filed half of all 2025 suits. The busiest, working with Manning Law, filed 241.

This is why Shopify stores are targeted so often. Many stores use the same themes and the same apps, so the same barrier shows up on thousands of sites. A firm that finds it once can find it again quickly.

Most website suits settle early and in private, so the amounts are not published. Be careful with any page that quotes a precise average: we have not found one backed by data. Here is what is public.

The ADA itself pays no damages to the person who sues

Under Title III, a private plaintiff can get an order to fix the barrier and attorney's fees, but no money damages (42 U.S.C. sections 12188 and 12205). In practice, a settlement pays the plaintiff's lawyer fees and, where state law allows damages, a payment to the plaintiff.

State laws add money

• California's Unruh Act: at least $4,000 for each offence, plus fees (Civil Code section 52).
• New York: compensatory damages under the state and city human rights laws, punitive damages under the city law, and a $100 to $500 penalty per violation under Civil Rights Law section 40-d. See New York's state and city laws.

Some cases have public amounts

When the Justice Department brings a Title III case, a court can order a civil penalty of up to $118,225 for a first violation and $236,451 for a later one (28 CFR 85.5, for penalties assessed after July 3, 2025). Court-approved settlements and consent decrees are also public. A few website cases with published amounts:

Private settlements: estimates only

Accessible.org, an accessibility consultancy, wrote in April 2024 that website settlements “usually range between $5,000 and $20,000”, based on what clients and defence lawyers told it. Treat that as one practitioner's estimate, not a statistic.

The settlement is rarely the whole cost. You also pay your own lawyer and the work to fix the site, and settlements often require audits, training and a deadline to meet a WCAG level, as the H&R Block decree did. A settlement also binds only the person who sued. If the barriers stay, the next firm can sue over the same problems.

Most complaints follow a template. A blind or low-vision plaintiff says they tried to buy something with a screen reader (software that reads the page aloud) and could not. In Jones v. Moscot.com (S.D.N.Y.), the claims were missing alt text, hidden elements, badly formatted lists, pop-ups that were not announced, unclear labels, mouse-only functions and broken links. On a Shopify store, here is where each one usually lives.

The ADA website checklist lists every check by store area, with the Shopify admin steps.

Three things have made a real difference in recent cases. None of them replaces a lawyer.

• Proof that the site was fixed. In Jones v. Moscot.com, the store filed a declaration and an outside consultant's audit report. The audit found nothing that stopped a purchase except one low-severity issue, which was then fixed. The plaintiff offered no evidence in reply, and the court dismissed the federal case as moot, without prejudice (Seyfarth, April 1, 2026). The plaintiff could still file again in state court.
• Standing challenges. Federal judges in New York now ask whether the plaintiff really meant to buy. Some cases have been dismissed and others sent to hearings on that question.
• Prompt fixes after notice. New laws in Utah and Missouri let a business based there fight back against an abusive website suit if it started fixing the barriers soon after written notice. Our guide to ADA demand letters covers both laws and the first steps after a letter arrives.

The Justice Department's 2022 guidance lists common barriers: poor colour contrast, colour used alone to show meaning, missing alt text, videos without captions, online forms that are hard to use and pages that only work with a mouse. You can check all of them yourself.

A scan finds part of the problem, not all of it. Automated tools cannot judge whether alt text is useful or whether a page makes sense when read aloud, which is why the keyboard and screen reader steps matter. For the alt text step, see alt text examples for product images.

• Thinking a small store is safe. Most defendants are not large companies. A template complaint costs a firm very little to file.
• Relying on where you are based. If you sell into New York, Florida or Illinois, you can be sued there.
• Settling without fixing. The next plaintiff can sue over the same barriers.
• Adding a widget instead of fixing the theme. Suits against widget sites are about a quarter of the total.
• Forgetting apps. Reviews, chat, upsells and pop-ups are added on top of your theme and are often where the worst barriers are.
• Keeping no record. Without dates, you cannot show when you found and fixed a problem.