Here is a question that sounds like it should have an answer by now: if your business is a website, with no shop, no showroom, no front door anyone can walk through, does the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to it? Thirty-six years after the ADA passed, US federal courts genuinely disagree. One court will tell an online-only retailer the claim against it is dead on arrival. Another court, looking at the same statute, will let a nearly identical case go forward. For an Ontario business shipping to US customers from a warehouse in Brampton, that is not a law-school curiosity. It is the difference between a demand letter you can push back on and one you cannot.
Key facts
- ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Title III covers "places of public accommodation." The fight is over the word places: whether a website needs a physical location behind it to count (Ogletree / Pietragallo).
- In Murphy v. Spongellé LLC (U.S. District Court, Western District of Pennsylvania, 2024), the court held that only businesses whose websites have a connection to a physical store open to the public are covered by Title III, and dismissed the claim against an online-only retailer (Olshan / Ogletree).
- A federal court in Pennsylvania did it again in Wilkins v. Gold N' Diamonds, Inc. (E.D. Pa., 2025), dismissing where the allegations lacked a "nexus to a physical store open to the public" (Pietragallo).
- A federal court in Minnesota went the opposite way in March 2025, holding that a "public accommodation does not have to be a physical place" and that web-only businesses are subject to Title III (Seyfarth, ADA Title III blog).
- The Third, Sixth and Ninth Circuits have concluded public accommodations are limited to physical structures - but the Third Circuit itself has not definitively ruled on whether a standalone website qualifies, and neither has the Eighth (Seyfarth / Ogletree).
So is an online-only website covered or not?
Both, depending on where you get sued. That is the honest answer, and anyone who gives you a cleaner one is selling something.
The nexus camp reads Title III literally. The statute lists physical things - hotels, restaurants, theatres, bakeries, laundromats - and courts in this camp conclude Congress meant actual places. A website gets pulled in only when it is the on-ramp to one: order online, pick up in store, book a table, check a location's hours. Cut the physical anchor and, on this reading, there is nothing for the statute to attach to. That is the logic that ended Murphy v. Spongellé and Wilkins v. Gold N' Diamonds, both in Pennsylvania federal courts.
The other camp reads the purpose. If the ADA exists so people with disabilities get equal access to commerce, and commerce has substantially moved onto the web, then exempting exactly the businesses that exist only on the web produces an absurd result: the more purely digital you are, the less accessible you are allowed to be. That is essentially what the Minnesota court said in March 2025 when it refused to dismiss, holding a public accommodation does not have to be a physical place.
Neither side is fringe. Both are federal courts applying the same sentence. The appellate courts that could settle it mostly have not, at least not for web-only businesses.
What does this actually mean for an Ontario business?
Less than you would hope, and here is why: you do not choose the courtroom. A plaintiff does, and plaintiffs' firms are extremely good at filing where the law favours them. "A court in Pennsylvania might dismiss this" is worth very little when the complaint lands in a district that has gone the other way. A defence that depends on the plaintiff's forum choice is not a plan; it is a coin flip you do not get to call.
Second, winning still costs money. Murphy and Wilkins were dismissals, which is the good outcome - and it still meant lawyers, a response, a motion, and months. Dismissal is cheaper than settlement. It is not free, and it is not nothing.
Third, and most important: none of this touches your obligations at home. The split is a US argument about a US statute. In Ontario, the AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) has no private right of action, so the live individual route is a complaint to the HRTO (Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario) under the Ontario Human Rights Code - and the Code does not care whether a US judge thinks your website is a "place." Your IASR (Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation, O. Reg. 191/11, s.14) obligation to meet WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.0 Level AA applies to organizations with 50 or more employees regardless of what any American court concludes, and your next ACR (Accessibility Compliance Report) is due December 31, 2026 for organizations with 20 or more employees (ontario.ca). If you also sell into Europe, the EU Accessibility Act runs on its own logic entirely.
So the realistic read: the "we're online-only" argument is a live defence in some US courts, a loser in others, irrelevant in Ontario, and unavailable to most businesses anyway - the moment you have a physical location, curbside pickup, or a store locator, the nexus question is answered against you. Online stores draw accessibility claims for a reason, and jurisdictional arguments are a poor substitute for a checkout that works.
The position that holds up in every forum is the boring one: a site people can actually use, and a dated record of what you checked and fixed. That record is what an honest ACR should reflect, and it is the one asset that does not depend on which judge you draw.
Find out what a real user would hit on your store before a lawyer does - free Vayle Report, about 30 seconds: vayle.art. It detects overlay widgets, surfaces real WCAG failures, and tells you exactly what legally applies to your organization in Ontario. No obligation.
Vayle is a remote-first accessibility-engineering studio serving Ontario. General information, not legal advice.