Accessibility Lawsuits by State: Where Risk is Highest

New York, California, Florida, and Illinois account for approximately 89% of all website accessibility lawsuits filed in the United States. The driver is state civil rights statutes, which add monetary damages beyond what the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provides.

The reason is structural. Most of these cases are no longer filed solely under federal law. They are filed in state courts, where plaintiffs can recover damages that the ADA does not offer. The result is that identical accessibility gaps carry very different price tags depending on where a company operates.

For a multi-state business, that is a map of where your exposure concentrates, and most companies have never really looked at it. Below, we’ll break down which states drive the most filings, why their laws make them more expensive, and what multi-state operators should do about it.

California and the Unruh Act: The Costliest State to Get Sued

Under the Unruh Civil Rights Act, each violation carries statutory damages of at least $4,000, and a single inaccessible site can generate multiple violations. Because an ADA claim in California can be paired with an Unruh Civil Rights claim, plaintiffs there have a financial incentive that doesn't exist in other states.

This is why California sees the volume it does. At $4,000 per violation(opens in a new tab), the damages compound fast. A single site with a dozen barriers is $48,000 exposure on the statutory minimum alone, before attorney’s fees and before a case reaches discovery. No other high-volume state attaches a price tag quite like California.

For how that exposure compares to federal penalty schedules, see our breakdown on ADA Compliance Fines.

New York Exposure: The Human Rights Law Overlay

New York generates the highest volume of website accessibility filings in the country through a three-layer legal structure: the ADA, the New York State Human Rights Law(opens in a new tab) (NYSHRL), and the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL). The state accounts for 43% of all U.S. website accessibility lawsuits and led federal filings in 2025 with 1,021.

California’s pressure comes from a single statute with a large damage number. New York’s comes from layering. A plaintiff in New York City can bring a federal ADA claim, an NYSHRL claim, and an NYCHRL claim off the same inaccessible website, and the city law is the most plaintiff-friendly of the three. 

There’s a venue story underneath the volume, too. New York’s federal filings actually dropped in 2025 after the Second Circuit’s Calcano v. Swarovski(opens in a new tab) decision made it harder to establish standing in federal court. The cases didn’t go away; they moved to state court, where the Human Rights Laws live, and the bar to filing is lower. For a business with any New York footprint, that means the exposure isn’t shrinking. It’s relocating. 

Florida and Texas: Rising Filing Concentration

Florida has long ranked among the top states for accessibility filings, with approximately 950 federal lawsuits filed in 2025, nearly double its 2024 total. Plaintiffs file there in volume, often through the same firms that file in New York and California. 

Texas rounds out the top tier. It ranked among the highest states for ADA Title III filings in 2025(opens in a new tab), and its concentration in major metros like Houston and Dallas makes it an emerging fourth hotspot for multi-state operators to watch. 

The concentration in both states is on filing patterns and plaintiff activity rather than a unique damages statute. Still, the practical effect for a multi-state is the same: more states with meaningful exposure than there were even two years ago.

Illinois: The Fastest-Rising State

Illinois accounts for 17% of all U.S. website accessibility lawsuits, placing it third nationally behind New York and Florida and ahead of California. It is the fastest-rising state in the country by filing volume.

The mechanism is the Illinois Human Rights Act(opens in a new tab) (IHRA), which prohibits discrimination in public accommodations, as well as in employment, housing, credit, and education. Under 775 ILCS 5/8A-104(opens in a new tab), the Illinois Human Rights Commission can order a business to cease and desist, pay actual damages for the complainant's injury or loss, extend full and equal enjoyment of its goods and services, and cover the complainant's attorney's fees and costs.

Illinois works differently from California. While the Unruh Act sets a $4,000 statutory minimum per violation, giving plaintiffs a predictable floor, the IHRA enumerates its remedies without a per-violation minimum, so damages turn on what a complainant can prove, including purely emotional harm. What Illinois offers instead is fee-shifting, which makes smaller cases economical to bring.

Worth clearing up: the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act(opens in a new tab) (IITAA) requires WCAG 2.1 AA conformance but creates no private right of action and applies only to state agencies and public universities. For private businesses, the exposure runs through the ADA and the IHRA.

Why are Accessibility Lawsuits Moving to State Courts?

Nearly 8 in 10 website accessibility lawsuits are now filed in state courts rather than federal courts. This is because they are faster, less expensive to litigate, and governed by laws that can multiply damages. For example, under California’s Unruh Act and New York’s Human Rights Laws, a plaintiff can recover a fixed amount per violation simply by establishing that the barrier existed.

That single difference shifts things. A plaintiff can pair a state claim with a federal claim, clearing the federal bar for injunctive relief while collecting state-law damages on top. The federal ADA awards no damages to private plaintiffs at all, so the incentive to file lands wherever a state law attaches a price tag to each violation.

That’s the mechanism behind the geographic concentration. The states with the most filings are states whose laws make filing most rewarding, a shift our data traced back more than five years, with filings now doubled since 2020.

State Demand Letter Patterns: What to Watch Before a Lawsuit

Most accessibility disputes start with a demand letter, not a lawsuit. It's a pre-suit notice from a plaintiff's attorney asserting that your site has accessibility barriers and naming a settlement figure to resolve the matter. The letter itself looks similar everywhere, but what's behind the number changes by state, and that's the part multi-state operators should read closely.

A California letter, for example, is usually anchored to the Unruh Act's per-violation damages, so the figure is backed by statute rather than open to negotiation. A New York letter, on the other hand, typically cites the State and City Human Rights Laws alongside the ADA, reflecting the stacked claims that drive the state's volume. Florida and Texas letters more often lead with the federal ADA alone, where the leverage is the cost of defending a case rather than a damages multiplier.

For a business operating in several states, the takeaway is simple: the same set of barriers can produce very different demands depending on where the letter originates. Reading the jurisdiction tells you what you're actually facing.

For how to respond if a claim arrives, see our post on how to respond to an ADA compliance lawsuit.

How Multi-State Operators Reduce Accessibility Lawsuit Risk

Multi-state operators reduce risk by conforming to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, continuously monitoring, and covering every state in which they operate.

This risk doesn't sit still. Your exposure isn't concentrated in one jurisdiction you can monitor and forget, and a one-time fix won't hold: the barriers that trigger lawsuits (broken forms, unlabeled buttons, keyboard traps) reappear every time your site changes. Plaintiffs file on the site as it exists the day they visit, not the day you last applied fixes.

Partial coverage doesn't hold up either. In 2025, 38.5% of businesses sued for lack of accessibility already had an accessibility solution in place, usually a widget that promised instant compliance. Automated tools detect roughly two-thirds of barriers and fix about half of those, so most issues still require human expertise. And 64% of lawsuits cite violations on interior pages, such as product pages and account dashboards, rather than the homepage.

This is where a comprehensive platform earns its place. AudioEye pairs automation with Expert Audits, so automation handles scale and certified experts handle the issues that require judgment. That combination delivers up to 400% more legal protection than automation or consulting-only approaches. And AudioEye’s valid claim rate remains under 10%, nearly 70% lower than that of other industry solutions. If a demand letter arrives, AudioEye Assurance backs you. 

See exactly where your exposure is today. Run a free accessibility scan and find the barriers plaintiffs look for before they do.