Serial Plaintiffs and Repeat Defendants: What ADA Web Accessibility Litigation Data Actually Shows
Quietramp Editorial ·
If your business ever gets a demand letter or a lawsuit over website accessibility, a natural next question is whether you’re an isolated target or part of a pattern. Two of the most widely cited litigation trackers in this space — Seyfarth Shaw’s ADA Title III tracker and UsableNet’s annual litigation reports — both publish data on exactly that. It shows something specific and countable: a meaningful share of ADA website lawsuits target companies that have already been sued before, filed by a relatively small, concentrated group of plaintiffs and law firms.
Quick answer: Federal ADA website-accessibility lawsuit filings rose 27% in 2025 to 3,117 cases, up from 2,452 in 2024 (Seyfarth Shaw). Separately, UsableNet’s tracking found that of the more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits filed in 2025 across federal and state courts, at least 1,427 targeted companies that had already faced a prior ADA web accessibility claim — and in federal court specifically, UsableNet put the repeat-defendant share at 46%. The filings themselves aren’t spread evenly across the plaintiff bar either: UsableNet’s 2026 trend analysis found that roughly 20–25 individual plaintiffs, working with a small group of law firms, drive most of this litigation, and that the 10 most active plaintiff firms account for about 84% of filings.
This article is general accessibility and litigation-data information, not legal advice. Compliance with the ADA, WCAG, or any other accessibility law or standard is a legal determination; consult qualified counsel for legal risk assessment specific to your business.
“Serial plaintiff” and “repeat defendant” — two sides of the same pattern
The two terms describe the same underlying data from opposite directions. A serial plaintiff is an individual who has filed, or is named in, a large number of ADA website lawsuits — often dozens or more, usually working with the same law firm each time. A repeat defendant is a business that has been sued more than once over its website’s accessibility, sometimes by different plaintiffs represented by different firms. Litigation trackers report on both because they’re two measurements of the same concentration: a small number of plaintiffs and firms account for most filings, and a meaningful share of those filings land on businesses that have already been through this once.
How many ADA website lawsuits actually get filed
Seyfarth Shaw’s ADA Title III tracker — one of the most established sources for this data — recorded 3,117 website-accessibility lawsuits filed in or removed to federal court in 2025, a 27% increase over the 2,452 filed in 2024. Website cases made up 36% of all federal ADA Title III filings in 2025, up from 28% the year before. New York (1,021 filings), Florida (961), and Illinois (585) accounted for most of the volume; Minnesota (162) and Pennsylvania (137) rounded out the top five. California is a notable outlier in the other direction — only 4 website-accessibility filings there in 2025, which Seyfarth attributes to a run of federal court decisions in that circuit finding that purely online businesses aren’t covered by the ADA. State-level outcomes on this question aren’t uniform, which is one of several reasons a general article can’t tell you how the law applies to your specific site.
Separately, UsableNet’s tracking counts a broader category — “digital accessibility lawsuits,” which includes state-court filings and mobile app claims alongside federal website cases — at more than 5,000 for 2025. That’s not directly comparable to Seyfarth’s federal-only website figure; the two trackers measure overlapping but different things, and neither claims to be a complete national count (private demand letters, which never reach a public docket, aren’t counted by either).
The repeat-defendant pattern
This is where the two trackers’ data gets more specific than “lawsuits are common.” UsableNet’s reporting states plainly: “Of the more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits filed in 2025, 1,427 targeted companies that had already faced an ADA web accessibility claim.” In federal court specifically, UsableNet put the share of cases involving a repeat defendant at 46%.
Read together, the pattern the data shows is that getting sued once doesn’t reliably close the matter for good — a substantial share of defendants named in a given year’s filings have been through this before. Neither tracker’s public reporting breaks out why a given repeat defendant was sued again (a narrow fix, an unrelated new plaintiff, a different page or feature), so this article draws only the observation the data supports, not a causal explanation for any individual case.
A small number of plaintiffs and firms account for most filings
The plaintiff side of this data is similarly concentrated. UsableNet’s 2026 trend analysis reports that approximately 20 to 25 plaintiffs, working with a relatively small group of law firms, bring most digital accessibility lawsuits, and that “the 10 most active plaintiff firms account for approximately 84 percent of filings.” The same UsableNet reporting names some of the more active firms in its 2025 dataset, including Mizrahi Kroub LLP, Equal Access Law Group PLLC, Gottlieb and Associates, Stein Saks PLLC, and Shaked Law Group — cited here only as examples of the kind of firm the tracker identifies as high-volume filers, not as an assertion about any specific pending or past case.
UsableNet’s data also shows this litigation isn’t evenly spread across industries: e-commerce businesses accounted for roughly 70% of the companies targeted in 2025, with food and beverage/hospitality businesses a distant second at about 21%.
Why the same company can get sued more than once
UsableNet’s trend reporting describes a mechanism behind the repeat-defendant numbers: a settlement typically resolves the dispute with the specific plaintiff who filed it, but it doesn’t prevent a different plaintiff, represented by a different firm, from bringing a separate claim later — especially since court filings are public record, and firms that track this space can see which businesses have been sued before. A settlement that addresses only the specific barrier named in one complaint, without a broader review of the site, leaves other unrelated barriers in place for the next claim to find.
What this means if you’re weighing your own risk
None of this data says any specific business will or won’t be sued, and it isn’t a basis for a legal risk assessment of your site — that’s a determination for an attorney looking at your actual site and circumstances. What the tracked data does support is a narrower, practical observation: litigation in this space is concentrated (by plaintiff, by firm, and by industry — e-commerce most of all) and recurring (getting sued once doesn’t obviously reduce the odds of it happening again, per the repeat-defendant figures above). That’s a reasonable argument for treating a first review as a starting point for an ongoing practice, not a one-time box to check.
Get ahead of it, and stay ahead of it
A one-time, human-verified WCAG 2.1 AA audit gives your developers exact, code-level fixes for $890 — not a risk score, not a guarantee, just a documented starting point. Given how much of this data is about repeat litigation, ongoing $99/month re-monitoring exists specifically for the same reason a one-time fix doesn’t end the story: sites change, new pages ship, and a barrier that wasn’t there at audit time can appear later. See a real sample report or check pricing.
This article is provided for general educational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Litigation-tracking data reflects filings recorded by the cited trackers as of their publication dates and will change over time; consult a qualified attorney for guidance specific to your website and circumstances.