The congressional support for this letter arises on the heels of a recent surge in website accessibility lawsuits against public accommodations in every sector alleging that websites that are not accessible by people with disabilities violate the ADA. In 2017, a number of courts rejected defendants’ attempts to obtain early dismissals of these cases and supermarket chain, Winn Dixie, lost the first trial in a website accessibility case. These decisions opened the proverbial floodgates and resulted in at least 814 federal lawsuits in 2017 about allegedly inaccessible websites, including a number of putative class actions. The federal lawsuit numbers for 2018 will likely be substantially higher as our tracking shows that there were 349 suits just in January and February of 2018. Despite the monumental increase in litigation and urgent need for clear guidance, the DOJ abandoned its rulemaking on website accessibility standards for public accommodations websites at the end of 2017, seven years after it said it would issue regulations on this issue.
With the number of website accessibility lawsuits on the rise and courts allowing most of these cases to move forward, members of Congress are feeling pressure from the business community to take action against this cottage industry of lawsuits. Indeed, as expressed in the letter:
Members of Congress Urge DOJ to Declare That Private Website Accessibility Lawsuits Violate Due Process
With the number of website accessibility lawsuits on the rise and courts allowing most of these cases to move forward, members of Congress are feeling pressure from the business community to take action against this cottage industry of lawsuits. Indeed, as expressed in the letter:
usinesses of every shape and size throughout the country are being threatened with legal action by private plaintiffs for unsubstantiated violations of the ADA. This problem is expanding at a rapid rate since the Internet allows such actions to be filed from anywhere, and there are no restrictions or limitations on making such complaints. The absence of statutory, regulatory, or other controlling language on this issue only fuels the proliferation of these suits since there are no requirements these complaints have to meet. In fact, in most cases these suits are filed for the purpose of reaching a financial settlement and little or nothing to improve website accessibility.
Members of Congress Urge DOJ to Declare That Private Website Accessibility Lawsuits Violate Due Process