15,000 ADA Website Lawsuits in 4 Years: What the National Investigation Reveals

1. The Investigation: What Cox Media Found

In late February 2026, Cox Media Group — one of the largest media companies in the United States — published the results of a coordinated investigation into ADA website accessibility lawsuits. Consumer investigative reporters from at least six stations worked together: WSB-TV in Atlanta, WFTV in Orlando, WSOC-TV in Charlotte, KIRO 7 in Seattle, Boston 25 News, and others.

The investigation's central finding was staggering: their teams "combed through tens of thousands of lawsuits across the country" and identified more than 15,000 cases filed in the past four years — all claiming that visually impaired users could not properly access business websites.

This isn't a fringe issue. The lawsuits target every type of business imaginable — from a five-person Orlando flower shop (Leaf & Blossom Co.) to Atlanta heavyweights like Home Depot, Spanx, and Chick-fil-A. From a Gainesville bakery that sells $5 croissants to Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. From luxury fashion brands to restaurants, from SeaWorld to local pizza joints.

And perhaps the most telling statistic from the entire investigation: not a single case has gone to trial. Every one of the 15,000+ cases was either settled or dismissed. As attorney Peter Brann, who has defended about 100 of these cases, told reporters: "They're not really about ADA accessibility. It's all about attorney's fees."

2. By the Numbers: 15,000 Lawsuits Mapped

Let's put the Cox Media investigation data alongside other tracking sources to understand the full picture.

The Cox Media figure of 15,332 likely represents a subset of total filings. The Seyfarth Shaw annual report tracked 8,667 federal ADA Title III lawsuits in 2025 alone — but that only counts federal court cases. As we've documented in our state migration analysis, an increasing number of cases are being filed in state courts, where tracking is much harder.

Boston 25 News reported a precise count of 125 cases filed in Massachusetts courts within the broader 15,332 total. Their data also pinpointed specific serial plaintiffs: Nelson Fernandez appeared as plaintiff in 312 lawsuits since 2022. Victor Ariza appeared in 383.

The trajectory is clear. What was a niche legal strategy a decade ago has industrialized into a mass-filing operation affecting businesses in every state, of every size, across every industry.

3. Serial Plaintiffs: 383 Lawsuits from One Person

The investigation put names and faces to the lawsuit machine. One of the most striking moments came when WFTV reporter Jeff Deal tracked down Victor Ariza at his Miami apartment. Ariza, who is blind, has been named as plaintiff in 383 lawsuits from 2022-2025.

When asked whether the lawsuits help the blind, Ariza said through an interpreter: "100%. A lot, of course." But when the reporter asked about a specific website he had sued — Leaf & Blossom, the Orlando flower shop — his response was revealing.

Ariza isn't alone. The investigation identified several serial plaintiffs:

• •Victor Ariza — 383 lawsuits (2022-2025), represented by Law Office of Pelayo Duran / Roderick V. Hannah
• •Nelson Fernandez — 312 lawsuits since 2022, also represented by Pelayo Duran
• •Makeda Evans — 52 lawsuits in Gainesville area since September 2024, represented by Aleksandra Kravets

This pattern of serial filing is not new — our analysis of courts scrutinizing serial ADA plaintiffs documents cases like Fernandez v. Cuddle Clones, where one plaintiff filed 57 lawsuits and a judge ordered jurisdictional discovery sua sponte. But the Cox Media investigation brings unprecedented public attention to the scale of the operation.

The question isn't whether these plaintiffs have legitimate disabilities — they do. Victor Ariza is genuinely blind. Makeda Evans is legally blind. The question is whether filing hundreds of lawsuits against businesses you can't remember visiting constitutes legitimate advocacy or an exploitation of the legal system.

4. Small Business Impact: $200,000 and Counting

The human cost of the lawsuit surge is best understood through individual stories. The Cox Media investigation featured business owners from across the country, and their accounts paint a consistent picture of fear, confusion, and financial devastation.

Sara Campbell: Three Lawsuits After $200,000 in Compliance

Sara Campbell runs a fashion business with stores from Cape Cod down the East Coast and a major e-commerce website. When she was first sued, she did everything right. She hired Perkins School for the Blind — one of the most respected institutions in the field — along with specialized ADA compliance coders to rebuild her website from the ground up.

Total cost: approximately $200,000. "Morally, we've done everything we can to be in compliance," Campbell told reporters.

Then she was sued two more times.

According to Campbell, the latest lawsuits targeted issues "inside the code" — problems detectable only through specialized scanning software. As she put it to Boston 25 News: "We've worked so hard on this. How? What is going on?"

Campbell's case illustrates a critical reality: one-time compliance efforts are not enough. Websites change constantly — new products, updated plugins, content changes, third-party integrations. Any change can introduce accessibility regressions. Without continuous monitoring, even a business that invested $200,000 in compliance can find itself back in court.

Leaf & Blossom Co.: A Five-Person Flower Shop Pays $7,000+

Ajeeta Khanna and her mother Kitty run Leaf & Blossom Co., a small flower shop in Orlando. Five employees total. Their website is largely run by a third party, and they believed it was ADA compliant.

Five days before Christmas 2024, they received notice of a lawsuit filed by Victor Ariza — the same plaintiff with 383 cases to his name. Their attorney told them the same thing every small business attorney says: it's cheaper to settle than to fight.

They paid more than $7,000 in legal fees and settlement payments. For a five-person flower shop, that's not a rounding error — it's an existential threat.

Uppercrust Bakery: "That's a Lot of Croissants"

Ben Guzick owns Uppercrust, a bakery in Gainesville, Florida. His website was built on Squarespace in 2003. Like many small business owners, he had no idea that Squarespace's templates weren't fully ADA compliant.

When Makeda Evans sued his bakery, Guzick had one of his servers — who was starting a master's program in cybersecurity — audit the website and implement fixes. Despite the good-faith effort, they settled for approximately $6,500, plus additional attorney fees.

The Uppercrust case raises a systemic issue: website builders like Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify produce templates that often aren't fully ADA compliant out of the box. Business owners trust these platforms to handle technical concerns, but the ADA liability falls on the business — not the platform. Our Squarespace ADA compliance guide details the specific issues and fixes.

The Pattern: Fear, Settlement, Repeat

Across every city the investigation visited, the pattern was identical:

1. Business receives lawsuit notice (often around holidays or busy seasons)
2. Attorney advises that settling is cheaper than fighting
3. Business pays $5,000-$20,000 in settlement and legal fees
4. Business scrambles to fix website accessibility issues
5. Another plaintiff files another lawsuit months later
6. The cycle repeats

As Stephanie Martz, chief counsel of the National Retail Federation, told reporters: "If you assume that the cost of settling every single one of those cases is at least $15,000 plus possibly attorney's fees, that adds up. If you prorate that around to all consumers and all families, that is a cost that is just a silly, pointless cost with no social value that people are having to pay."

5. The 16 Law Firms Behind 90% of Cases

Perhaps the most significant finding in the investigation: 90% of the nearly 4,000 ADA website lawsuits filed in 2025 came from just 16 specialized law firms. This isn't a grassroots movement of disabled individuals seeking justice — it's an industrialized legal operation.

The investigation specifically named several firms and their practices:

• •The Law Office of Pelayo Duran / Roderick V. Hannah — South Florida-based. Represents serial plaintiffs including Victor Ariza (383 cases) and Nelson Fernandez (312 cases). Neither attorney responded to media inquiries.
• •Bruce Carlson — Pittsburgh-based. One of the first attorneys to file ADA website lawsuits. Openly acknowledges filing "hundreds" of cases, describes it as "impactful litigation." He also sends demand letters at an even higher volume than lawsuits.
• •Aleksandra Kravets — South Florida-based. Listed as attorney in 256 ADA lawsuits across Florida, representing Makeda Evans in the Gainesville cases (89 in Middle District, 53 in Northern District, 114 in Southern District).

The business model is straightforward. Under the ADA, if a plaintiff wins (or settles), the defendant pays the plaintiff's attorney's fees. Plaintiffs cannot collect monetary damages — only an injunction (a court order to fix the website) and attorney's fees. This means the financial incentive flows entirely to the attorneys, not the disabled individuals.

Even Bruce Carlson, who defends the practice as necessary advocacy, acknowledges the system has problems. He told KIRO 7 that he's found other lawyers copying and pasting his own lawsuits with only minor details changed: "Their approach is antithetical to the interests of disability rights in some instances."

6. Both Sides: Advocacy vs. Exploitation

The ADA website lawsuit debate isn't black and white, and the Cox Media investigation — to its credit — presented both perspectives.

The Case for Lawsuits

Luz Marina Rosenfeld, a visually impaired woman from North Carolina, told reporters about the genuine frustration of trying to navigate inaccessible websites: "Very challenging. Many times, I couldn't get on websites. My husband had to help me. It's frustrating. It is sad."

Boston College Law Professor Judy McMorrow makes the legal case: "What you call abusive, I could say is effective. In many instances, private actions are the only meaningful enforcement of certain rights." She has a point — the DOJ has signaled changes to Title II enforcement but has never finalized website-specific standards for private businesses under Title III.

And the numbers support the idea that lawsuits drive change. According to WebAIM's annual survey, web accessibility has measurably improved over the past several years — though it remains far from universal. UF biomedical engineering professor Hongwu Wang noted that "a lot of businesses have figures, images, but they don't have alternative text," and that lawsuits have pushed businesses to address these issues.

The Case Against the Current System

The counter-argument isn't that accessibility doesn't matter — it's that the current lawsuit-driven system doesn't actually achieve it. Key problems:

• •Settlements don't require remediation — Many cases settle with a payment and no binding requirement to actually fix the website
• •Serial filings undermine legitimacy — When a plaintiff can't recall visiting a website they sued over, it erodes public support for genuine accessibility needs
• •Small businesses bear disproportionate costs — A $6,500 settlement is devastating for a bakery but a rounding error for Starbucks
• •No clear standards exist — As defense attorney Gary Edinger warned: "I don't think there's a website in the universe that's compliant," because there's no universally accepted standard
• •Money flows to lawyers, not accessibility — Under the ADA, plaintiffs can't collect damages — only attorney's fees

Even the National Federation of the Blind — the nation's leading blindness advocacy organization — has acknowledged both sides. Their 2019 resolution condemned plaintiffs and lawyers who "exploit the situation" while opposing laws that could hinder people with "legitimate complaints." They stated clearly: the ADA is not "a tool for greedy lawyers to extort quick cash settlements from businesses."

Nayan Padrai, a former defendant who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars investigating these lawsuits and is producing a documentary, makes perhaps the most uncomfortable claim: that law firms actively recruit visually impaired individuals to serve as plaintiffs. "The plaintiffs in New York that we spoke to were paid $500 for every settlement that had their name on them," he told KIRO 7.

7. The Gainesville Story: 49 Businesses, One Plaintiff

Just yesterday — February 28, 2026 — The Independent Florida Alligator published an extensive local follow-up to the Cox Media investigation, detailing how one plaintiff has impacted an entire city's small business community.

Makeda Evans, a 33-year-old legally blind woman, filed her first ADA website lawsuit in September 2024 — just months after the DOJ's April 2024 ADA Title II web accessibility ruling. Since then, she has sued 49 businesses, including 43 in Alachua County alone. She recently expanded beyond Florida, filing two suits on February 20 against businesses in Colorado.

Her attorney, Aleksandra Kravets, is listed on 256 ADA lawsuits across Florida: 89 in the Middle District, 53 in the Northern District (containing Alachua County), and 114 in the Southern District.

The Gainesville business community's response has been mixed:

• •Satchel's Pizza — Fighting back. Filed a motion to dismiss on February 18, calling Evans a "serial litigator" and an ADA "tester." Included an IT professional analysis showing the website "never presented significant barriers."
• •Uppercrust — Settled for ~$6,500 plus attorney fees. Owner now advocates for other businesses to check their sites proactively.
• •Gainesville Health & Fitness — Lawsuit still pending as of February 26
• •First Magnitude Brewing — Settled

Satchel Raye, who has owned Satchel's Pizza for 23 years, captured the frustration many business owners feel: "It's about money, because if we give them money, then the lawsuit goes away. So how is that about compliance?"

The Gainesville case also highlights a practical compliance challenge. Raye removed an external link to 352 Delivery because it wasn't ADA compliant — but that removed a feature other customers relied on for online ordering. As he told the Alligator: "The most challenging part of the lawsuit is complying with ADA requirements without removing delivery options and business information for other customers."

UF professor Hongwu Wang identified the root issue: "We are always trying to fix the issue, patch it, instead of involving the users. We have to understand what caused the unusability instead of just focusing on compliance."

8. Legislative Reform: States Fighting Back

The Cox Media investigation comes at a moment when legislative reform is gaining real momentum. As documented in our State ADA Reform Laws Tracker, multiple states are introducing "right to cure" legislation:

• •California SB 84 — Would give businesses a 120-day "right to cure" period before ADA lawsuits can proceed. Given that California leads the nation with 3,252 federal filings in 2025, this would be seismic.
• •Utah SB 68 — Requires written notice and a cure period before filing. Utah and Missouri's proposals were among the first in the current wave.
• •Missouri HB 1674 — Similar notice-before-suit requirements
• •Federal ADA 30 Days Act — Proposed in Congress but hasn't gained enough bipartisan support for a floor vote

The American Bar Association has noted that "multiple congressional bills are being filed to provide a 'notice and opportunity to cure' for businesses." The core idea is simple: give a business 30-120 days to fix accessibility issues after being notified, before a lawsuit can be filed.

Disability rights advocates are split. Some support cure periods as a reasonable compromise. Others — including the National Federation of the Blind — worry that cure periods could be exploited by businesses that only fix issues when threatened with lawsuits, then let compliance slip again.

What's clear is that the Cox Media investigation — reaching millions of viewers across six major metro areas — will accelerate the political pressure for reform. When mainstream TV news runs multi-part investigations with hidden cameras and interstate coordination, legislators notice.

9. How to Protect Your Business Today

Whether you view the lawsuit surge as legitimate advocacy or systematic exploitation, the protection strategy is the same: proactive, documented, continuous compliance.

10. The Real Cost: Prevention vs. Litigation

Every business owner highlighted in the Cox Media investigation said the same thing in different words: they would have gladly spent money on compliance if they'd known about the requirements before being sued. The math makes the case clearly:

At a minimum, proactive compliance costs 8-20x less than a single lawsuit cycle. And unlike a settlement, compliance actually makes your website accessible — which is both the legal requirement and the right thing to do.

As Rory Martin, the Seattle-based web designer, told KIRO 7: "98 to 99 percent of folks who are small businesses to medium businesses are not ADA compliant at the basic level." That means nearly every business in America is potentially vulnerable. The question isn't whether your business could be targeted — it's when.

11. Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• 1.WSB-TV Atlanta — "Thousands of lawsuits say businesses don't have handicap-accessible websites" (February 2026)
• 2.WFTV Orlando — "Businesses Blindsided: Thousands sued for ADA violations on their websites" (February 2026)
• 3.WSOC-TV Charlotte — "People with disabilities accuse companies of breaking law, critics say plaintiffs game the system" (February 2026)
• 4.KIRO 7 Seattle — "Advocating or exploiting? Businesses sued over website ADA complaints" (February 2026)
• 5.Boston 25 News — "25 Investigates: Small businesses caught in surge of ADA website lawsuits" (February 2026)
• 6.The Independent Florida Alligator — "Some Gainesville businesses still fighting after mass ADA compliance lawsuits" (February 28, 2026)
• 7.National Federation of the Blind — Resolution on Serial ADA Website Lawsuits (2019)
• 8.Seyfarth Shaw LLP — ADA Title III Lawsuit Filing Annual Report (2025)
• 9.American Bar Association — "Digital Accessibility Under Title III of the ADA" (August 2025)
• 10.ADA.gov — "Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA" (updated February 2026)

Related Reading