Seyfarth Synopsis: New Kansas law will allow resident businesses to sue ADA website plaintiffs and their counsel over "abusive" litigation to recover defense fees and potentially punitive damages.
The Kansas legislature recently passed The Act Against Abusive Website Access Litigation that, starting on July 1, 2023, will allow Kansas businesses to sue ADA plaintiffs and their counsel to recover legal fees, as well as potentially punitive damages, for "abusive" website accessibility litigation commenced in any jurisdiction. The new law allows businesses (or the State Attorney General on behalf of a class of businesses) to file claims against plaintiffs and their attorneys in a Kansas court of competent jurisdiction to recover fees incurred in the defense of out-of-state website accessibility litigation, as well as in the Kansas enforcement action. The new law even authorizes the court to award punitive damages or sanctions not to exceed three times the fee award but does not provide any standards to guide the court in that determination (all these remedies also assume that a Kansas court would have personal jurisdiction over ADA plaintiffs and their law firms).
The new law adopts a "totality of the circumstances" test to determine if an ADA website lawsuit qualifies as abusive, which considers: (1) the number of substantially similar actions filed by the same plaintiff or firm (including those previously-declared frivolous or abusive litigation in the previous 10 years); (2) the defendant's number of full-time employees and available resources to correct the alleged website access violation(s); (3) whether the jurisdiction or venue is a "substantial obstacle" to defending the case; (4) whether the plaintiff or his or her attorney is a Kansas resident; and (5) the nature of settlement discussions, including the "reasonableness of settlement offers and refusals to settle."
If the prospect of punitive damages were not enough of a deterrent for plaintiffs to sue Kansas businesses over website accessibility, the law even includes an available presumption that an ADA website case is abusive. Specifically, when a business makes good faith attempts to cure the alleged violation after being placed on notice (either in the pleadings or otherwise) within 30 days, then the presumption applies. However, the presumption is unavailable where the business fails to correct the violation within 90 days of being placed on notice, as determined by the court. This framework harkens back to previous failed legislative initiatives to amend the ADA to mandate that plaintiffs provide businesses with notice of violations and opportunity to cure before a case can proceed.
The Kansas law will sunset if and when DOJ issues website accessibility regulations - which may well happen in the coming years.
As we have previously reported, website accessibility litigation is now making up a greater percentage of federal ADA Title III cases than ever before. The litigation is highly concentrated geographically, with 92 percent of federal ADA website cases filed in only three jurisdictions last year: New York, Florida, and California. Businesses of all shapes and sizes are often targeted, including many businesses domiciled outside of these jurisdictions.
The Kansas law explicitly states that there are instances where website accessibility litigation "is abused for the primary purpose of obtaining an award of attorney fees for the plaintiff instead of remedying the alleged access violation," and that "this small minority of cases . . . are almost always filed in another state's court system against smaller Kansas businesses." In fact, according to our data, the entire state of Kansas only had seven ADA Title III accessibility lawsuits in 2022 and none of them were about websites. It remains to be seen whether the Kansas law will deter website lawsuits against Kansas businesses, and whether plaintiffs, their lawyers, and the U.S. Department of Justice will challenge the law.
Edited by Kristina M. Launey
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