Seyfarth Synopsis: ADA Title III site accessibility lawsuits filed in federal courts in 2021 jumped 14% above 2020, besting the 12% 2020 enhance aided by a big November 2021 spike in filings.
The quantities are in for whole internet site accessibility lawsuit filings in federal courts in 2021, and they show a whopping 14% increase from 2020. The complete number of lawsuits filed in federal courts alleging that plaintiffs with a disability could not use web sites mainly because they were not designed to be obtainable and/or do the job with assistive technologies in 2021 was 2,895–372 far more than 2020. This 14% increase in the number of lawsuits in 2021 exceeds the 12% raise we noticed in 2020. Though these numbers pale by comparison to the explosion of scenarios we observed from 2017 to 2018 (an raise of 177%), the modern boosts are continue to quite important.
[Graph: ADA Title III Website Accessibility Lawsuits in Federal Court 2017-2020: 2017: 814; 2018: 2,258 (177% increase from 2017); 2019: 2,256 (.01% decrease from 2018), 2020: 2,523 (12% increase from 2019); 2021: 2,895 (14% increase from 2020). *The number of cases that could be identified through a diligent search.]
In the to start with 10 months of 2021, there were being in between 170 and 260 filings for each month except for March and August with 329 and 139, respectively. The filings surged in November 2021 to 499 mainly owing to 1 NY regulation company which filed 357 of those people suits.
[Graph: Total Number of Website Accessibility Lawsuits Filed by Month (Jan. 2021 – Dec. 2021): Jan. 2021 (234), Feb. 2021 (256), Mar. 2021 (329), Apr. 2021 (220), May 2021 (196), Jun. 2021 (242), Jul. 2021 (172), Aug. 2021 (139), Sep. 2021 (179), Oct. 2021 (183), Nov. 2021 (499), Dec. 2021 (246), *The number of cases that could be identified through a diligent search.]
New York, Florida, and California federal courts ongoing to be the busiest by considerably, with California thieving the #2 location from Florida in 2021. New York federal courts saw 2,074 lawsuits in 2021 (continuing upward from 1,694 in 2020, 1,354 in 2019, and 1,564 in 2018). California noticed 359 lawsuits (up from 223 in 2020, 120 in 2019, and 10 in 2018), and Florida observed 185 (continuing a downward pattern of 302 in 2020, 526 in 2019, and 576 in 2018) lawsuits, as revealed in the chart under. In fourth spot at 167, Pennsylvania was only a little down from its 173 lawsuits filed in 2020. Colorado dropped out of the top rated 10, and Illinois returned to the fifth place with 34 suits—2 far more than its tally of 32 in 2020 but (down from 91 lawsuits in 2019). Connecticut and Indiana remained in the prime 10 with relatively meager figures at 14 and 7, respectively, and newcomers Oregon and Wisconsin rounded out the top 10 with 5 and 4 filings, respectively.
These numbers do not account for the lots of desire letters sent out by law companies which in no way consequence in lawsuits, as well as lawsuits submitted in state courts (mainly in California) which are extra tricky to track. These numbers also do not contain lawsuits filed alleging that a cellular app is inaccessible, except if the lawsuit also alleged an inaccessible web site. In an unscientific lookup in 2019, we arrived throughout 203 lawsuits alleging a violation of the ADA due to inaccessible mobile applications all submitted by a few attorneys in Florida and New York this year that number was closer to 50.
[Graph: Top 10 States for Federal ADA Title III Website Accessibility Lawsuits 2021: NY 2,074, CA 359, FL 185, PA 167, MA 41, IL 34, CT 14, IN 7, OR 5, WI 4. *The number of cases that could be identified through a diligent search.]
If you’re questioning why California has so few site accessibility cases relative to New York, it’s simply because a lot of plaintiffs desire to file in condition court wherever the regulation is usually a lot more favorable towards plaintiffs, in particular when the defendant is an on the internet-only small business. We will be holding an eye on Florida in 2022 to assess the affect of the Eleventh Circuit’s determination to wipe the Gil v. Winn Dixie situation completely out of the casebooks on grounds of mootness. Ahead of undertaking so, nonetheless, the Eleventh Circuit experienced issued a selection that recognized a pretty higher hurdle for plaintiffs seeking to display an ADA violation in a site accessibility circumstance, suggesting that the Eleventh Circuit may possibly very well access the similar summary again. This choice could have a chilling impact on Florida plaintiffs in these sorts of scenarios.
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About our methodology: Our 2021 numbers are centered on queries utilizing key phrases of data from the Courthouse News Services. Hence, it is feasible that there are some web page accessibility situations that had been not captured in the searches if their descriptions did not contain the key phrases. We then overview the thousands of entries manually to eliminate lawsuits that might be about internet websites but are not about a website’s accessibility to a user with a incapacity. For instance, there were a variety of lawsuits in 2018-2021 (a really large explosion of this kind of fits in 2021 in California) introduced by plaintiffs with mobility disabilities alleging that the reservations web-sites of inns did not provide enough facts about the accessibility of resort services.