April was a quiet month in the courts. The action this month was elsewhere. On the regulatory front, the DOJ published an interim final rule extending the Title II web accessibility compliance deadlines by one year, and HHS is threatening a separate interim final rule threatening to gut the HHS Section 504 rule that risks actually killing people with disabilities. I covered both of those separately as they broke. As I discovered later, however, there are also suspicious signs of mischief behind the façade. On the legislative side, the wave of state laws targeting web accessibility lawsuits has started to crest: Missouri and Utah both have new statutes on the books, and Georgia is one governor’s signature away from joining them.
Fernandez v. Seb Management Group LLC
Fernandez v. Seb Management Group LLC, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83040 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 13, 2026), is the only interesting case this month. The defendant, a Florida mattress retailer, filed a motion to dismiss, raising standing, mootness, and failure to state a claim. The court disposed of the first two quickly and devoted most of its analysis to the third, which is where this case gets interesting.
Standing and Mootness
The court found standing adequate in a single paragraph: the plaintiff alleged multiple prior website visits, a stated intent to return by a specific date, a physical store within 25 miles, and regular travel through that area. On mootness, the defendant claimed it had fixed the website since the suit was filed; the plaintiff alleged that the accessibility notice the defendant added actually made things worse for screen reader users. That factual dispute was enough to survive dismissal. Neither holding required extended analysis.
The Nexus Clown Show Comes to a Mattress Store
The more interesting question was whether the plaintiff stated a claim at all. The court never used the word “nexus.” Instead, it cited Fernandez v. Flanigan’s Enterprises for the proposition that “website inaccessibility must be an intangible barrier to plaintiff’s ability to communicate with defendant’s physical stores.” Because SEB Management’s website allowed customers to purchase products for delivery or in-store pick-up, the claim survived.
The implicit logic is that the 11th Circuit’s nexus requirement does only one thing: filter out claims against purely online companies with no physical stores. Any retailer with both a website and a brick-and-mortar presence satisfies it. I have argued for years that the nexus test is unworkable, and Fernandez inadvertently supports that claim; the standard is so easy to meet that it barely functions as a standard at all.
WCAG as Evidence, Not a Legal Standard
The defendant also moved to strike Fernandez’s allegation that the website failed to comply with WCAG 2.0 Level AA, arguing that the ADA doesn’t require WCAG compliance. The court disagreed — not because the ADA incorporates WCAG, but because the allegation was offered to show the website “fell below an acceptable level of accessibility,” not to establish per se noncompliance. As I have written before, there is no such thing as an “ADA compliant website” in the sense of a bright-line technical standard. Instead, WCAG is only evidence of what good accessibility looks like. If you’re feeling a bit confused, that’s okay, because I’m sure many other courts would have ruled differently.
Fake News: Small Businesses and the ADA Title II Regulation
A Manufactured Panic, Perfectly Timed
In the days leading up to DOJ’s publication of the April 20 Interim Final Rule delaying the Title II web accessibility deadline, my Lexis feed was flooded with a single article: “The ADA deadline small businesses don’t know is coming.” The piece originated with Clym — a company selling automated digital accessibility compliance tools — and was syndicated via Stacker to dozens of outlets under their own mastheads. Everywhere you looked: small businesses facing an ADA reckoning. Google it yourself and you’ll probably find a local paper that ran the story.
The timing is deeply suspicious. In our post covering the IFR, we noted that the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy had taken an unusually prominent seat at the table in this rulemaking. This is unusual because Title II covers state and local governments, not businesses. Advocacy’s influence requires a justification. A media ecosystem loudly insisting that small businesses face an imminent ADA deadline they don’t know about is a suspiciously convenient one.
But the Argument Is Wrong
The Clym article correctly acknowledges that the Title II rule applies to public entities, not private companies, and that private businesses fall under Title III. It then argues that because courts have used WCAG 2.1 AA as the benchmark in Title III cases, DOJ’s formal adoption of the same standard in a Title II rule “only strengthens” that precedent. That’s a laughable sleight of hand that screams fearmongering.
Title II and Title III are not interchangeable. Title II descends from Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a Spending Clause statute that conditions federal funding on nondiscrimination. Title III stems from the Commerce Clause and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Different constitutional foundations, different coverage, different enforcement regimes. What DOJ requires of state governments under one says nothing about what it can require of private businesses under the other.
Any reader of this blog also knows about the nexus problem: most circuits require a connection between a website and a physical place of public accommodation for a Title III web case to proceed at all, making a universal federal web accessibility regulation for private businesses nearly impossible to sustain. And post-Loper Bright, any agency that tried to extend WCAG to commercial websites through Title III rulemaking would face an immediate challenge in federal court. DOJ and OMB know all of this. The authors of the Clym article assume that its readers do not.
Small businesses face real Title III exposure — but it exists independently of the Title II rule and isn’t affected by it at all. What the article changed was the noise level, which arrived at exactly the right moment for those who used it as cover.
Anti-Abusive Web Accessibility Litigation Laws: Missouri, Utah, and Georgia
The wave of state legislation targeting web accessibility lawsuits has begun to yield actual laws. Missouri and Utah enacted statutes this spring, and Georgia appears close behind. We have been tracking these bills since December 2025, when Missouri first introduced a cluster of proposals. The common thread: a cure period after notice, fee-shifting if the plaintiff presses forward and loses, and a role for the state attorney general in pursuing what the bills call “abusive” filers. Because most web accessibility lawsuits include federal ADA claims, it’s unclear whether these laws will have any impact beyond making the politicians who support them look like they care about private business.
Missouri SB 907
SB 907, the Act Against Abusive Website or Web Content Access Litigation, was signed into law and takes effect August 28, 2026. It consolidates a cluster of proposals we first tracked in December 2025, including HB 1674. Businesses get a 90-day cure period after receiving notice; if a plaintiff pushes forward after a cure and loses, fee-shifting and treble-fee sanctions follow. The Missouri Attorney General can also investigate and seek penalties against attorneys engaged in abusive filings. It is the most aggressive anti-abusive-litigation statute enacted by any state so far.
Utah SB 68
SB 68 was signed by Governor Cox on March 23, 2026. Effective May 6, 2026, it creates a rebuttable presumption of abusive litigation if the business remediates within 90 days of notice and allows the Attorney General to pursue sanctions. As I noted when this bill was introduced in the January 2026 Legal Update, the Tenth Circuit — which covers Utah — already has the lowest volume of web accessibility lawsuits in the country, making this more political theater than a practical necessity.
Georgia HB 1470
HB 1470 passed the Georgia General Assembly on the final day of the 2026 legislative session and is awaiting Governor Kemp’s signature. The bill creates a cause of action for abusive web accessibility litigation, allows recovery of damages and treble attorney’s fees, and authorizes the Attorney General to seek injunctions and civil penalties. Introduced in the February 2026 Legal Update.
Bill Tracker
Yikes, it's amazing how fast the anti-abusive web litigation cases are taking off-- both Georgia and Utah have laws that look like they are about to pass.
Another note is that the deadlines for the new Virgina bill are coming up fast-- April 24, 2026!
| State | Bill | Description | Latest Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Federal | HR 3417 | The bipartisan Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act of 2025 creates clear accessibility standards for private and public section digital platforms. May 2025 Legal Update | Introduced on May 14, 2025. | |
| Federal | HR 5605 | The Medical Device Nonvisual Accessibility Act of 2025 requires HHS and the Access Board to develop regulations and standards for accessible consumer medical devices October 2025 Legal Update | Introduced on September 26, 2025. | |
| Federal | HR 7328 | The Protecting Small Businesses from Predatory Website Lawsuits Act seeks to amend the ADA to add administrative steps before any web accessibility lawsuits against small businesses February 2026 Legal Update | Introduced on February 2, 2026. | |
| California | AB 2190 | Limits ability to bring web accessibility lawsuits by amending California's Unruh Act. February 2026 Legal Update | Introduced February 19, 2026. | |
| Colorado | HB 25-1152 | Requires insertion of new clause holding vendors liable for inaccessible IT sold to public schools | Signed by governor on May 24, 2025. | |
| Georgia | HB 1470 | Creates cause of action against individuals who file abusive web accessibility lawsuits February 2026 Legal Update | Passed legislature and will be signed into law shortly. | |
| Missouri | HB 1674 | Enables state attorney general to seek damages from attorneys engaging in abusive web accessibility litigation. December 2025 Legal Update | Signed into law and will be effective August 28, 2026. | |
| New Mexico | HB 295 | Requires WCAG 2.1 AA for all state agency websites and creates new Office of Accessibility. February 2025 Legal Update | Looks like an attempt to resurrect HB 120, which passed the legislature and was vetoed by the governor. As of February, "action postponed indefinitely," which doesn't sound promising. | |
| New Jersey | S 1016 | Requires state agencies to meet WCAG A/AA and proposes that the state Chief Technology Officer create a certification process for state agency websites. February-March 2024 Legal Update. | Passed Senate March 18, 2024 and referred to committee. Signed into law by the governor on January 20, 2026! | |
| Pennsylvania | HB 485 | Requires public entities to create a plan for meeting WCAG by July 1, 2028. February 2025 Legal Update | Introduced February 4, 2025. The current two-year session ends on November 30, 2026. | |
| Utah | SB 68 | Act Against Abusive Website Access Litigation makes it easier to sue someone who claims a company's website is inaccessible. January 2026 Legal Update. | Signed into law March 23, 2026. | |
| Virginia | HB 2541 | Requires vendors to provide a VPAT/ACR and for vendors to submit a plan for closing any gaps. January 2025 Legal Update. | Approved by governor on March 24, 2025. Now chaptered into Virginia Code |
Disclaimer
Nothing in this post should be interpreted as legal advice or as forming an attorney-client relationship. It is offered for educational purposes only. You should always contact a qualified attorney in your area to discuss your legal rights and responsibilities.
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