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Over two years after hearing oral arguments, the Eleventh
Circuit Court of Appeals finally issued an opinion in
Gil v.
Winn-Dixie, Case No. 17-13467,
overturning the Florida federal district
court s finding that the grocery store chain violated
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by having an
inaccessible website. In the 67-page decision, the Court of Appeals
held that websites are not places of public
accommodation under the ADA and that the Winn-Dixie website
was not an intangible barrier to goods, services,
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The ADA and Website Accessibility – A Brief Background: Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in the activities and services of places of public accommodation. Although the applicable regulations define “[p]lace of public accommodation” in a way that seems to limit the ADA’s reach to brick-and-mortar business operations, the past half-decade has brought a flood of lawsuits alleging that company websites (typically retail websites) inaccessible to individuals with visual impairments violate the ADA. However, few of these suits have reached the courtroom, leaving businesses with little case law and no regulatory guidance to rely on in determining whether websites are covered by the ADA and, if covered, what is required to make them ADA-compliant.
In a win for businesses, on April 7, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held in Juan Carlos Gil v. Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., that websites are not “places of public.
On April 7, 2021, in
Gil v. Winn-Dixie, Case No. 17-13467, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued an important decision on whether Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq., is violated when a place of public accommodation (there, a grocery store) offers valuable in-store benefits to customers through a website that is inaccessible to individuals with visual disabilities.
The 2-1 panel decision is significant, and is a likely precursor to U.S. Supreme Court review because, among other reasons, it expressly disagrees with and rejects a prior decision by the Ninth Circuit, the only other circuit court to squarely address the issue of whether the ADA applies to websites. The
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Seyfarth Synopsis: The Eleventh Circuit’s much-anticipated decision in Gil v. Winn Dixie sets a higher bar for plaintiffs in website accessibility lawsuits and creates a conflict among judicial circuits that could result in Supreme Court review.
After two and a half years of deliberation, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit finally
Gil v. Winn Dixie, overturning the
trial court’s finding that Winn Dixie violated the ADA by having an inaccessible website. Rather than clarifying the state of the law on website accessibility, the decision makes the law on website accessibility even more complicated.