Ask George: Did anything come of the wave of local restaurant lawsuits filed last year over ADA noncompliance?

In August 2025, SLM reported on a surge of lawsuits alleging website accessibility violations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. According to this article, more than 2,000 of these lawsuits were filed across the country in the first half of 2025, with 100 of them in Missouri. SLM reported that many of the latter were filed by a Kansas City–based attorney on behalf of a blind plaintiff who said restaurant websites were incompatible with screen-reading software. To some local operators, the demand letters felt less like a warning than a “shakedown,” as restaurateur Kevin Nashan put it.

Part of the frustration, attorneys said at the time, was the lack of clear standards. “There is absolutely no governmental specificity as to how you make your website in compliance,” said Kyler Humphrey of Summers Compton Wells. Faced with a vague law and the threat of federal litigation, many businesses chose to settle rather than engage in an expensive fight.

Several restaurateurs told SLM they would have fixed the issue if given the chance. Dave Bailey of Baileys Restaurants said his company relied on a third-party web developer and assumed its templates met legal requirements. “Of course we would have corrected it,” he said. “But the communication left no option to do that without a monetary settlement.”

Kevin Puckett, the attorney behind most of the suits, rejected the notion that the cases were opportunistic. “These cases seek injunctive relief…to bring businesses into compliance,” he wrote, arguing that private lawsuits are often the only way that ADA standards are enforced.

Missouri lawmakers have since stepped in. On March 25, the Missouri Senate unanimously passed legislation giving businesses 90 days to address alleged ADA violations before a lawsuit can proceed; the Missouri House passed a similar bill earlier this month. Lawmakers must now reconcile the two versions before sending a final measure to the governor. For restaurateurs like Nashan, it’s a welcome development. “Finally,” he says, “there’s some resolution.”

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