ADA Litigation Update

ADA Litigation Surge

The Americans with Disabilities Act’s digital front has shifted from legal grey area to high-stakes battlefield. In 2025 alone courts saw more than 5,000 lawsuits alleging that websites and apps exclude blind, deaf or mobility-impaired users, a sharp rise fuelled by automated scanning tools and plaintiff firms that file dozens of cases per week.

E-commerce retailers bore the brunt: nearly 70 percent of filings hit online sellers, many of them small businesses whose annual revenue sits under $25 million. Settlements routinely run tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and remediation costs; repeat defendants now make up roughly 45 percent of federal cases, turning one lawsuit into an open invitation for others.

The pressure intensifies with the approaching federal deadline. Under the DOJ’s 2024 Title II rule, state and local governments must bring their websites, mobile apps, PDFs and online forms into line with WCAG 2.1 AA by April 24, 2026 for larger jurisdictions and April 2027 for the smallest. The rule replaces years of vague “effective communication” requirements with explicit technical standards, and early court references suggest private businesses will feel the ripple effect.

Non-obvious tensions are emerging. State-court venues in New York and California allow Unruh Act damages that can multiply awards far beyond federal limits, accelerating filings there. At the same time the DOJ in February 2026 filed a rare statement of interest opposing a proposed nationwide class settlement against Fashion Nova, arguing it overpaid lawyers while delivering little concrete access and even used an inaccessible settlement website. The FTC’s $1 million 2025 settlement with overlay provider accessiBe further undercuts the once-popular claim that automated tools alone suffice.

Legacy systems, third-party content and the sheer pace of digital updates create genuine trade-offs: full compliance is expensive and technically complex, yet inaction now carries both immediate litigation risk and the longer-term precedent set by public-sector enforcement.