What “Standing” Means in an ADA Website Lawsuit, and When It Can End the Case

Every ADA website lawsuit starts with a person who says your site didn’t work for them. Before a court looks at your website, it has to be satisfied that this person has “standing,” the right to bring the case at all. If they don’t, the case ends without anyone deciding whether your site is accessible.

For a business owner, standing comes down to two questions. Did this person really try to use your website and run into a barrier? And is it believable that they will come back to it? The federal ADA only lets a private plaintiff ask for an order to fix the site, plus attorney’s fees. A court can only order that fix for someone who is likely to be harmed again.

My name is Michael Samuel. I am an ADA defense attorney in New York, admitted in 1993, and I have defended about 100 ADA cases since 2019, most of them about websites. Standing is one of the first things I check in every complaint. This article explains what plaintiffs have to show, what New York courts have dismissed and what they haven’t, and why standing is often decided twice. It ends with what a standing win does and doesn’t do.

One thing first. A standing argument is only worth something if it is made on time. In federal court you generally have 21 days after you are served to answer or move to dismiss.

The Second Circuit, the federal appeals court that covers New York, asks three things of a plaintiff who wants a court order under the ADA:

1. A past injury. The plaintiff actually ran into a barrier. On a website, that means trying to use it with a screen reader or other assistive technology and being unable to do something specific, such as find a product or complete a purchase.
2. A barrier that is still there. It has to be reasonable to infer the problem will continue.
3. A real intent to return. This is where most standing fights happen. It has to be believable that this person will come back to this website.

In 2022, in Calcano v. Swarovski, the Second Circuit made the third point much harder to meet with boilerplate. The question isn’t whether a complaint uses the magic words “intends to return.” It’s whether, looking at all the facts, the plaintiff plausibly faces “a real and immediate threat of future injury.” The same court had already held in Harty v. West Point Realty (2022) that a vague plan to come back “some day,” with no concrete plans, isn’t enough.

What about “testers”? Some plaintiffs visit websites to check them for accessibility rather than to shop. In Harty, the Second Circuit said testers can have standing, but “even testers” have to show a real injury. The U.S. Supreme Court took up the question in 2023 and didn’t decide it, because that case had become moot. So being a tester doesn’t end a case on its own, but it can make an intent to return harder to believe.

Since Calcano, New York courts have dismissed many website cases for lack of standing, and refused to dismiss many others. The difference is almost always detail.

Cases that were dismissed:

• Martin v. Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Co. (Brooklyn federal court, 2025), a proposed class action we defended. The court found the plaintiff’s claimed intent to return “self-evidently false”: he said he lived in Brooklyn, and the company has no Brooklyn locations. It held that a plaintiff must give specific reasons, beyond living nearby, for wanting to return to a particular business.
• Sumlin v. Royal Batch (Manhattan state court, June 2026), another case we defended. The court took judicial notice that the plaintiff had filed 36 nearly identical website lawsuits in eighteen months, adopted the reasoning of Calcano, and found his standing allegations to be “bare legal conclusions or inherently incredible.”
• Melendez v. Raaka Chocolate (Brooklyn federal court, September 2025): the amended complaint was dismissed for lack of standing, with one more chance to amend.
• Delacruz v. New You Bariatric Group (Manhattan federal court, October 2025): a magistrate judge recommended dismissal because the plaintiff’s evidence of intent to return was thin. He had visited the website twice in 2023 and once more after discovery closed, when he was facing a motion for summary judgment. “Three times in two years,” the court wrote, “is far from the regularity required.”

What survives. Complaints that name a specific product, give dates of visits and explain why the plaintiff wants this business in particular often get past a motion to dismiss. Courts have accepted, for example, a plaintiff who named the exact chocolate bars he wanted and described eating that kind of product weekly, and one who visited a site five times in five months for a particular honey butter.

Some plaintiff firms now draft their complaints with exactly that kind of detail. So the first step is reading your complaint against these cases, not assuming it will be dismissed. Our four dismissals since March 2025, including Carrico v. Homelement in October 2026, with the courts and index numbers, are on the results page. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Most people think of standing as an argument about the words in the complaint. That’s the first test, but not the only one.

On paper. A motion to dismiss early in the case asks whether the complaint, taken as true, plausibly shows standing. A detailed complaint will often pass.

With evidence. Standing goes to whether the court has jurisdiction at all, so in federal court a defendant can challenge it with facts beyond the complaint. Courts can then order discovery limited to standing. In February 2026, a Manhattan federal judge ordered discovery and an evidentiary hearing on whether a plaintiff had really tried to buy from a custom pet-toy website and genuinely intended to return. Less than a month later, the case was voluntarily dismissed with prejudice. In August 2026, another Manhattan judge allowed limited discovery on a plaintiff’s standing before the defendants had to answer.

Under oath. If a case goes on, the plaintiff is deposed, and standing has to be proven, not just alleged. Two 2026 decisions show what that looks like:

• Martinez v. Tusk Ltd. (Brooklyn federal court, June 2026): summary judgment for the business. The plaintiff testified she had visited the site only twice, conceded she didn’t intend to return for the bag she had wanted, and gave only vague testimony about the barriers.
• Fernandez v. The Buffalo Billfold Company (Manhattan federal court, August 2026): the court found that no reasonable juror could find an intent to return. The plaintiff had visited the website once, in his own words to tell someone whether it was ADA compliant. He had filed at least 54 ADA lawsuits and didn’t keep track of the companies he sued. The products he later said he was looking for were never sold by the business.

The lesson for an owner: even if a complaint survives the first motion, the plaintiff’s own testimony can end the case later. Your records of what you sell, where you ship and where you operate can be part of that.

It ends the case, but usually not forever. In federal court, a dismissal for lack of standing is generally without prejudice, because the court never had the power to decide the merits. The plaintiff may be allowed to amend, or may file again, sometimes in state court. When the federal claim goes, federal judges often decline to keep the state and city claims, which can then be refiled in state court.

State court is not a way around it. New York state courts require standing too, and in Royal Batch the Manhattan court applied the same reasoning as Calcano to dismiss a website case.

It doesn’t fix your website. A standing dismissal says nothing about whether your site works with a screen reader. The next plaintiff may have better facts. Fixing the site properly is still the best protection, and when and how you do it can matter. See should you fix your website before or after responding.

What to gather now:

1. The service date, so the motion is made on time.
2. What the complaint says the plaintiff tried to do: the product, the dates, the page. Check it against your site. Was that product ever sold? Do you ship where the plaintiff lives? Do you have a location where the complaint says you do?
3. The plaintiff’s other lawsuits. Court records are public, and a long list of near-identical complaints can matter, as it did in Royal Batch. See why the same plaintiffs sue so many businesses.
4. Your own records of what you sell and where you sell it, kept as they are today.

For a plain-English walk-through of your papers, see how to read an ADA lawsuit complaint, or upload the complaint to our free complaint checker.

Michael Samuel has defended about 100 ADA cases since 2019, most of them about websites. He is admitted in New York and in the federal courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. For website cases, the firm charges a flat fee that covers all work up to trial, including a motion to dismiss. That means a standing motion doesn’t add to your bill.

When a complaint comes in, we read it against the cases above, check the plaintiff’s filing history and compare what the complaint says about your website with what your business actually sells and where. Then we tell you plainly whether standing is a real defense in your case or whether another path makes more sense.

For the website itself, we work with Codexyo, an independent web accessibility team that fixes sites like yours. They are not lawyers, and you’re free to use anyone.