Serial ADA Title III lawsuits strain small businesses, spark reform push

One Manhattan cafe owner found 75% of 35 cited violations were invalid

Rodrigo Nogueira learned of the lawsuit against his restaurant in April 2025, when lawyers contacted him about a summons alleging violations of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was the first he had ever heard of the case.

The complaint named No More Cafe, his restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village, and listed 35 violations. One alleged the restaurant had a noncompliant outdoor table — an accusation that puzzled Nogueira because the cafe has no outdoor tables. Other alleged violations described conditions inside the restaurant, even though the plaintiff said he was unable to enter.

When Nogueira researched the lawsuit, he discovered that the plaintiff who sued him and the plaintiff’s lawyer had filed complaints against dozens of small businesses. The attorney who filed the lawsuit against him alone had filed more than 100 ADA lawsuits over the previous nine years against storefront businesses, according to public court records.

“The [plaintiff] that’s suing me — he’s got 67 cases,” Nogueira told The Guardian from a table in his cafe.

Before hiring a lawyer, Nogueira filed a motion himself to dismiss the case. But the judge said a company cannot represent itself in court. For small businesses, spending thousands of dollars in legal fees just to file a motion can be prohibitively costly.

Frustrated, Nogueira began speaking with other small business owners who had been sued. “Every business owner I spoke to had opened within the last year or two. Every one of them was an immigrant,” Nogueira, who is from Brazil, wrote on his website. “None of us had any idea how to navigate the federal court system. Most were already several thousand dollars into legal fees by the time we talked. Several of them did not realize they had been sued until the deadline to respond had already passed.” Other small business owners The Guardian spoke to, who largely declined to speak on the record, said they also feel unfairly targeted by serial ADA litigants.

The complaint against No More Cafe cited Title III, the section of the ADA created to ensure that people with disabilities do not face “barriers to entry” at stores, restaurants, bars and cafes. The Department of Justice may take up corporate noncompliance cases, but there is no local regulator for ADA compliance, and private litigation has long been the principal means of bringing smaller businesses into compliance.

Many storefront businesses feel they could successfully fight alleged violations on the grounds that they are unable to fix them or that they are already in full compliance. But the cost of going to court and paying thousands of dollars in legal fees often makes fighting the violations, regardless of whether they are valid, insurmountable.

When a business is served with an ADA lawsuit, the options are to fix the violations that are “readily achievable” and settle out of court — which The Guardian reported could cost anywhere from $13,000 to $20,000 in legal fees, with the plaintiff offering Nogueira $8,000 that would not cover his own counsel — or to go to court, which could cost between $20,000 and $50,000 or more in legal fees.

To business owners, being forced to hire a lawyer can feel unfair. When it comes to enforcement of other laws, such as health, fire safety, or liquor regulations, hiring legal services is rarely necessary; businesses work directly with the city to become compliant.

The financial exposure can extend further for renters. Leases often include a clause that makes renters responsible for ADA violations, including paying the legal fees of their landlords, who are often named in the lawsuit as well.

Businesses have leeway under the law’s “readily achievable” standard, which permits modifications when they are “easy to do without much difficulty or expense” and which holds that “a business with more resources is expected to remove more barriers than a business with fewer resources.”

Jessica Walker, president and CEO of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, who testified before the New York City Council last year on the impact of serial ADA lawsuits on small operators, said the cost of compliance often exceeds what small businesses can absorb. “Oftentimes the repairs can be cost-prohibitive,” Walker said. She also said there needs to be more education for small businesses so they know what their ADA responsibilities are.

Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, a nonprofit that advocates for legal reform in the state, said the lawyers behind the suits appear unconcerned with whether the alleged violations have merit. “It is the definition of throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks,” Stebbins said. He said the lawyers and plaintiffs seem focused on coercing small businesses to settle, and that the system feels like it is “being abused by bad actors right now.” Stebbins argued that courts should be more willing to sanction lawyers for filing false claims, which he said would discourage serial litigation. Small business advocates say the ADA’s enforcement system allows lawyers who represent serial litigants to make thousands of dollars off of small businesses.

Ruth Colker, who recently retired from the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, where she specialized in constitutional law and disability discrimination, said the structure of serial litigation reflects how Congress designed the ADA. “[It] was Congress’s decision to only allow enforcement through injunctive relief, primarily through private litigation,” Colker said. “That is what Congress said has to happen in order for the world to become accessible.”

Ronnette Riley, a New York architect who has worked on accessibility and ADA compliance for her entire career, said the law was likely written with new construction in mind, and that owners of buildings constructed after the ADA became law have no excuse for being noncompliant. Compliance in older buildings — particularly those that are landmarked or in historic districts — often requires approval from other government agencies. The code itself, Riley said, is “very convoluted in places and there are judgment calls.”

Disability advocates say the lawsuits are necessary to enforce a civil rights law and make businesses more ADA compliant. Michelle Uzeta, executive director of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said the vast majority of ADA lawsuits identify real violations. “I get that store owners don’t like to be sued, but the vast majority of cases that are filed — whether they are filed by individuals filing their first case or individuals who are filing 20 cases a month — there’s actual violations there,” Uzeta said. “The ADA has been in place for 30-plus years at this point. There is no reason why accessibility issues have not been dealt with by now.”

One reform proposal has begun to move through Congress. A bipartisan bill introduced in the House in December, the ADA 30 Days to Comply Act, would give businesses a 30-day remediation window before litigation could proceed.

Uzeta warned that such a cure period would set “a dangerous precedent for all civil rights.” “If Congress accepts that disability discrimination deserves a warning and a waiting period, it invites the same logic for every other protected class,” she said. “Advocates across the civil rights coalition should treat this as a test case, not a niche disability issue.”