The ADA Website Lawsuit Industry Is a Shakedown and I'm Tired of Watching Small Businesses Get Extorted By It

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There’s a cottage industry operating in the federal court system right now that should make you furious regardless of where you sit on civil rights law. Serial plaintiffs — many represented by the same handful of law firms — are filing ADA Title III website accessibility lawsuits in bulk against small businesses, demanding quick settlements in the $5,000–$25,000 range, and moving on to the next target. Rinse. Repeat. The targets are almost never large corporations with legal departments. They’re restaurants. Startups. Boutique retailers. People who built a Squarespace site three years ago and forgot about it.

These cases are ridiculous. I handle them at reduced rates because I don’t like watching bullies work.

What the Law Actually Says

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act — codified at 42 U.S.C. § 12182 — prohibits discrimination in “places of public accommodation.” The original statute was written in 1990 when the internet was still mostly a DARPA project, so “place of public accommodation” meant physical locations: hotels, theaters, restaurants, gyms. Courts have spent thirty years arguing about whether websites count.

Most circuits now say they do — or at least that websites with a sufficient nexus to a physical location count. The DOJ agrees. In August 2023, the Department issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing to require WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance for Title III private businesses — the same technical standard it finalized for state and local government websites under Title II in 28 C.F.R. Part 36 in early 2024. The NPRM for private entities hasn’t been finalized yet, but courts are already treating WCAG 2.1 AA as the operative benchmark. So that’s where you are.

WCAG 2.1 Level AA is a set of technical specifications for web content — things like text contrast ratios, keyboard navigability, alt text for images, screen reader compatibility. It’s not that hard to implement if you do it from the start. It’s annoying to retrofit onto a legacy codebase, which is exactly why most small businesses haven’t done it.

The Acheson Hotels Problem

The Supreme Court got a clear look at how this litigation pattern works in Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer, decided in December 2023. Deborah Laufer had sued hundreds of hotels — not because she was planning to visit any of them, but because she was a self-appointed “ADA tester” whose business model was finding websites that lacked accessible room booking information under 28 C.F.R. § 36.302(e) and filing suit. She had no intention of ever staying at any of these properties. She just wanted the statutory damages and attorney’s fees.

The cert question was whether she had standing to sue at all — whether a plaintiff who has suffered no concrete injury beyond ideological offense at a non-compliant website can invoke federal jurisdiction. It’s a genuinely important question. The Court dismissed the case as moot without reaching it after Laufer voluntarily withdrew her cases following ethics sanctions against her attorney. So: no precedent, no clarity, and the serial filers are still out there.

The standing question will eventually get resolved. Until it does, the litigation ecosystem that produced Laufer — and the dozens of law firms doing exactly what her attorneys did — remains fully operational.

What to Do When You Get the Letter

First: don’t panic. Second: don’t call the plaintiff’s attorney to “work it out.” That call never goes the way you think it will.

Here’s what actually matters when you receive a demand letter or complaint:

Assess the claim. Is your website actually WCAG 2.1 AA non-compliant? Run an audit — there are automated tools that will tell you in twenty minutes. If your site is already compliant or substantially compliant, you have a much stronger defense. If it’s not, remediation before the case proceeds matters both legally and practically.

Evaluate the plaintiff. Serial filers have patterns. Same law firm, same plaintiff, same complaint template, hundreds of cases. Courts have started noticing this. Judges in the Southern District of Florida and the Eastern District of New York — two of the highest-volume jurisdictions for these cases — have issued sanctions and shown real skepticism toward boilerplate complaints. Knowing your adversary’s track record changes your settlement calculus.

Don’t assume settlement is the only option. Standing defenses are viable, particularly in circuits that haven’t definitively resolved the “tester” question post-Acheson. Motions to dismiss have succeeded. Fee-shifting under 42 U.S.C. § 12205 runs both ways — if you win, defendants in frivolous cases have recovered fees.

That said, remediation plus a reasonable settlement is often the right answer for a small business staring down $50,000+ in potential defense costs. That’s not legal cowardice. That’s math.

If You’ve Just Received One of These

If a demand letter just landed in your inbox and you’re a startup or small business that built a website and forgot to think about WCAG compliance, the situation is manageable. This is not the end of the world. But you need counsel who understands both the legal landscape and the technical side of what “accessible website” actually means — which, it turns out, is a shorter list than you’d expect.

If you want to talk through it, my firm handles ADA digital litigation defense — including these exact cases — at reduced rates for startups and small businesses, because I think serial plaintiff ADA litigation has become a bully’s game and I’m not interested in watching it go unanswered.

More about our ADA Digital Litigation Defense practice here.

Knowledge to the people.

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