Can an Online-Only Business Be Sued Under the ADA? What New York Courts Say

In 2025, the same blind plaintiff sued two companies over their websites in the same Manhattan federal court. Both companies argued that their websites had no physical store behind them. In April, Judge Jennifer Rochon let her case against one of them go forward, ruling that a commercial website is covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act on its own. In December, Judge Arun Subramanian threw out her federal case against the other, ruling that it isn’t.

If your business sells only online and you’ve just been sued over your website, that split is the most important thing to understand. Here is what the December ruling says, why it doesn’t settle the question in New York, and what it can and can’t do for you.

The ADA’s rules for private businesses apply to a “place of public accommodation.” The law defines that term with twelve categories of businesses and about fifty examples: restaurants, bakeries, hardware stores, laundromats, banks, theaters and so on.

In Fernandez v. Gainful Health (December 10, 2025), Judge Subramanian of the federal court in Manhattan held that this list describes physical places, and that a business that exists only as a website isn’t one. He followed an earlier Brooklyn federal decision, Winegard v. Newsday (2021), which noted that dictionaries overwhelmingly define a “place” as a physical location. He dismissed the federal ADA claim for good, without letting the plaintiff try again.

He did not decide the claim under the New York City Human Rights Law. He dismissed it in a way that leaves the plaintiff free to refile it in state court, and he pointed out that the city law covers any “place or provider of public accommodation,” wording that New York courts could read more broadly than the ADA.

Judges in the same courts disagree. Several New York federal judges have taken the same view as Fernandez, including in Winegard (2021) and in two Manhattan decisions from 2024, Sookul v. Fresh Clean Threads and Mejia v. High Brew Coffee. Others have ruled that a commercial website is covered on its own, including Romero v. 88 Acres Foods (2022) and Fernandez v. Vanilla Chip (2025).

The appeals court hasn’t ruled. The Second Circuit, the federal appeals court that covers New York, has not decided the question. Elsewhere, most federal appeals courts that have looked at it tie the ADA to physical places, while at least two read it more broadly. In 2019, the Supreme Court declined to hear a website case against Domino’s Pizza that could have settled the split.

The judge you draw matters. The argument now comes up often enough that at least one Manhattan federal judge’s standard order in new website cases tells both sides to discuss whether the site is a “standalone website,” meaning a business with no physical location. Even so, the answer can still depend on which judge gets your case.

It’s a federal defense. Many New York website cases are filed in state court under state and city law. Fernandez doesn’t decide those claims, and the judge noted that there is no controlling law yet on whether the city law reaches online-only businesses.

If customers can walk into your store, restaurant, salon or office, this defense probably won’t help. Even judges who take the narrow view say a website connected to a physical place of business can be covered, like a shop’s online store or a restaurant’s online ordering.

If you sell only online and the case is in federal court, this can be a strong argument for an early motion to dismiss, alongside standing, which turns on whether the plaintiff genuinely intends to come back to your site.

A win on this point may not end the case. In Fernandez, the federal claim ended, but the city law claim was left for state court. Plan for that before you decide how to respond.

Your deadline still runs. Selling only online doesn’t pause the time to answer: generally 21 days after service in federal court, and 20 or 30 days in New York state court depending on how you were served. See how to read the complaint, or upload it to our free complaint checker for a plain-English summary.

Fixing the site still pays off. A legal defense ends one case. An accessible site lowers the risk of the next one, in whichever court it’s filed. See whether to fix your website before or after you respond.

Michael Samuel has defended about 100 ADA cases since 2019, most of them about websites. When an online-only business is sued, whether its site even counts as a “place of public accommodation” is one of the first things we check, along with standing and the plaintiff’s filing history.

For website cases, the firm charges a flat fee that covers all work up to trial, including a motion to dismiss, so raising this argument doesn’t change what you pay.

Recent dismissals the firm has won, with the courts and case numbers, are on our results page.