What You Need To Know About California’s Unruh Act — Even if Your Business Is Out of State

Most Americans are familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act(opens in a new tab) (ADA), the landmark civil rights law that establishes protections for people with disabilities. However, California’s Unruh Act predates the ADA by more than 30 years — and like the ADA, it allows plaintiffs to sue businesses for operating inaccessible websites and mobile apps.

Even if you don’t have a physical location in California, the Unruh Act may apply to your business or non-profit. The good news: If your website complies with the ADA, it also complies with the Unruh Act (and a number of other disability non-discrimination laws).

In this article, we’ll explain what the Unruh Act is, who it applies to, and how you can test your web content for common barriers that impact users with disabilities.

What Is the Unruh Act?

California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act(opens in a new tab), also known as California Civil Code Section 51, provides protection from discrimination by all business establishments within the state. Enacted in 1959, it prohibits businesses from discriminating on the basis of age, ancestry, color, disability, national origin, immigration status, medical condition, marital status, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. 

The Unruh Act was named after its author, former California Assemblyman Jesse M. Unruh. It applies to most organizations that serve customers who live in the state of California, including (but not limited to):

• Hotels and motels

• Non-profit organizations that have a business purpose or are a public accommodation

• Restaurants

• Theaters

• Hospitals

• Barbershops and beauty salons

• Housing accommodations

• Public agencies

• Retail establishments

Who Can Be Sued Under the Unruh Act?

The Unruh Act can be applied to almost any business that sells or promotes products or services in California, with limited exceptions.

Per a 2022 ruling from the California Court of Appeals, online-only businesses are not covered by the Unruh Act.(opens in a new tab) That decision may be appealed to the California Supreme Court, which may change that precedent. However, if a business has a brick-and-mortar establishment, the Act still applies — even if the business is not located within the state. 

In 2020, a pair of California residents sued Fairfield Collectibles(opens in a new tab) (a Georgia-based online retailer) in California’s state courts for not making its website fully accessible to people with visual impairments.

Although Fairfield’s motion to dismiss the suit was initially granted, the California Court of Appeals reversed the decision, noting that the business made roughly 10% of its sales to Californians. As a result, Fairfield’s website was “the equivalent of a physical store in California.”

Here’s the takeaway: the Unruh Act applies to all businesses that provide products or services to California residents. While the Act has some limited exemptions (for example, some retirement communities may discriminate based on age), those exceptions are not applicable to digital content.

A chart of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, with a label that says following the Level AA guidelines can reduce a business' risk of litigation.

What are the Unruh Compliance Standards?

The Unruh Act does not include specific technical standards for websites, apps, or other digital products. Neither does the ADA, which we’ll discuss in a moment. 

However, businesses must make reasonable efforts to create accessible content to comply with the law. The good news is that digital accessibility has well-established standards: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

WCAG is published by the World Wide Web Consortium(opens in a new tab) (W3C), which also publishes standards for HTML, CSS, and other web technologies. WCAG addresses hundreds of digital barriers that can impact people with disabilities.

The Guidelines contain three levels of conformance: 

• Level A: The least strict and most essential requirements.

• Level AA: Considered by most accessibility experts to be a reasonable baseline for accessible online experiences. 

• Level AAA: The most strict requirements.

The bottom line: If your website meets the Level A/AA standards of the latest version of WCAG, you’re in great shape for compliance.

A map of the United States that indicates the Unruh Civil Rights Act is a piece of California legislation, while the Americans with Disabilities Act is federal.

The Unruh Act vs the Americans with Disabilities Act

In 1992, the Unruh Act was amended to include people with disabilities in the list of those entitled to full and equal accommodation. At the same time, the Act adopted the standards set by the ADA(opens in a new tab), writing, “[a] violation of the right of any individual under the Americans with Disabilities Act … shall also constitute a violation of this [Act].”

For this reason, many web accessibility lawsuits cite the ADA and the Unruh Act. Here’s why: Unlike the ADA, the Unruh Act allows plaintiffs to sue businesses for up to three times the amount of actual damages incurred, for “no less than” $4,000 per offense (Title III of the ADA only allows plaintiffs to recover legal expenses such as attorney’s fees).

In order to sue for monetary damages under the Unruh Act, however, plaintiffs must prove that the damages were the result of intentional discrimination — unless the offense also violates the ADA.

Key Differences Between the Unruh Act and the ADA

• The ADA is federal legislation, while the Unruh Act is intended to protect people from business discrimination or harassment within the state of California.

• The ADA is specific to disability status, while the Unruh Act prohibits other types of discrimination.

• The Unruh Act specifically applies to businesses and some non-profit organizations. 

• The ADA applies to all places of public accommodation and government agencies and contractors. Another law, California Assembly Bill No. 434(opens in a new tab) (AB 434), directly addresses website accessibility for California state agencies.

The bottom line: If your business sells in California, an accessible website can help reduce your chances of litigation under the Unruh Act and Title III of the ADA.

How Can I Comply With the Unruh Act’s Web Accessibility Requirements?

To improve compliance with California state law and federal law, you’ll need to test your content against the latest version of WCAG.
Some WCAG criteria can be tested with automated tools. Other issues require human judgment, so the best practice is to use a combination of automated and expert testing.

Testing against WCAG will allow you to find — and fix — barriers that impact real-life users, including many issues that have been cited in Unruh Act lawsuits:

• Low-contrast text, which may be unreadable for people with vision disabilities.

• Missing captions for multimedia content.

• Poor keyboard accessibility, which may make websites unusable for people who use a keyboard alone for navigation.

• Missing alternative text (also called alt text) for images, which allow people who use screen readers or have images turned off to understand the purpose of non-text content.

• Out-of-order subheadings, which can make websites less navigable for individuals who use screen readers and other assistive technologies.

Following WCAG can dramatically lower your chances of a lawsuit under California’s Unruh Act, Title II and Title III of the ADA, and dozens of other laws — but more importantly, an accessible website provides a better experience for every user.

Your content becomes more intuitive, more readable, and more useful. The best practices of inclusive design overlap with the best practices of search engine optimization (SEO), which can drive more traffic to key pages. The business case for digital accessibility is extremely strong, and WCAG provides a framework for getting started.

An illustration of the Pacific Ocean, with an accessibility icon peeking over the horizon.

Building a Strategy for Unruh Act Compliance

If your business operates in California, you have a responsibility to follow the Unruh Act — and even if you don’t sell products or services to California consumers, you still need an accessible website to comply with the ADA.

At AudioEye, we’re committed to helping businesses take practical steps to improve web accessibility. Our Automated Accessibility Platform continuously monitors your website for accessibility issues with each new visitor — in some cases, fixing those issues automatically. When an accessibility barrier requires human judgment, our platform provides guidance for solving the problem. Expert Audits and remediations ensure reliable accessibility for users and help organizations meet California compliance requirements. 

By balancing powerful automation with human expertise, we believe that our approach provides the best path toward ongoing compliance. To see how it works, get started with a free scan of any webpage.