Minnesota ADA Website Lawsuits: What Frost v. Lion Brand Changed

Minnesota became one of the most consequential states for ADA website lawsuits in 2025, when a federal court here held that a web-only business is a “place of public accommodation” under the ADA — with no physical store required. That single ruling, Frost v. Lion Brand Yarn, reshaped the risk calculus for every Minnesota site.

The Minnesota difference: a web-only site is a public accommodation

Most state pages have to hedge on whether a purely online business is even covered by the ADA. Minnesota doesn’t. On February 6, 2025, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez denied a motion to dismiss in Frost v. Lion Brand Yarn Co., No. 0:24-cv-00950 (D. Minn.), holding that Lion Brand’s retail website is a place of public accommodation under Title III of the ADA — even though Lion Brand sells online with no brick-and-mortar shop tied to the site.

Two legally blind plaintiffs, Clarence and Tammy Frost, alleged the site was unusable with screen-reader software. Lion Brand argued the classic defense: a website is not a “place,” so Title III doesn’t reach it. The court rejected that argument and let the case proceed.

That is the angle that makes Minnesota distinct: many federal courts only extend the ADA to a website when it has a “nexus” to a physical store. Frost declined to require one.

This page is general information, not legal advice. For your specific situation, consult a qualified Minnesota attorney.

What the court held in Frost v. Lion Brand Yarn

For anyone who landed here looking for the decision itself rather than a vendor, here is the citation and the holding, with nothing added.

The holding. Ruling on Lion Brand’s motion to dismiss the amended complaint, the court held that a website — even though it is not a physical structure — is a place of public accommodation for purposes of Title III of the ADA. Reaching that conclusion, the court acknowledged that Title III’s statutory list of public accommodations does not expressly include websites, and that a circuit split exists on whether a place of public accommodation must be a physical structure — a split the Eighth Circuit, where the District of Minnesota sits, has not resolved. The court found the statutory language open to interpretation and was persuaded by the line of district-court case law taking an expansive view of the ADA’s scope. Because the website was therefore a place of public accommodation, dismissal was inappropriate.

Three things this decision is not, which matter as much as what it is:

• Not a ruling that Lion Brand’s website violated the ADA. Denying a motion to dismiss means the plaintiffs’ claims may proceed to be tested — nothing more. The case remains pending.
• Not binding precedent. A district-court order binds no other court. It is persuasive authority that Minnesota plaintiffs can now cite in their own district.
• Not a resolution of the circuit split. Only the Eighth Circuit, or the Supreme Court, can do that for Minnesota.

What the plaintiffs alleged is instructive for any site owner reading this. Per the case record, the complaint described a site that failed to alert screen readers to the contents of pop-up windows and left non-text images, unordered lists, and colour-coded content inaccessible to screen-reader users. The plaintiffs also argued that a “one-time fix” was inadequate relief and asked for a change in corporate policy — the same argument that makes ongoing conformance, rather than a one-off cleanup, the defensible position.

Why the “physical nexus” question matters in the Eighth Circuit

The federal appellate courts are split on whether a website alone can be a public accommodation. Writing in the ABA’s Business Law Today, practitioners describe the landscape this way: only the Ninth Circuit has directly addressed the question, finding websites covered where they have a “nexus” with a physical place; the First, Second, and Seventh Circuits have indicated Title III may cover online-only businesses; and the Third and Sixth Circuits have indicated it reaches only businesses with a physical nexus.

Minnesota sits in the Eighth Circuit — which has not ruled on the issue. Seyfarth Shaw’s ADA Title III blog makes the same point about Frost: “recognizing the disagreement among federal appellate and trial courts on this issue, as well as the fact that the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals (within which the District of Minnesota sits) has not opined on the issue, the Court went to great lengths to justify its decision.” Seyfarth’s read on what follows is direct — the decision “may spark a trend of web accessibility lawsuits in Minnesota and the Eighth Circuit.”

That matters two ways. Until the Eighth Circuit speaks, Frost is persuasive district-court law rather than binding precedent, so the question stays technically unsettled. More practically, Frost hands Minnesota plaintiffs an in-district opinion to cite that lands on the plaintiff-friendly side of the split. If you operate a Minnesota site, assume a plaintiff can reach you without ever pointing to a storefront.

Minnesota’s own law: the MHRA stacks on top of the ADA

A Minnesota case isn’t just a federal ADA claim. Plaintiffs routinely plead the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA) alongside Title III, and the MHRA is in some respects more dangerous to defendants.

• Coverage. Minn. Stat. § 363A.11 makes it unlawful to “deny any person the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of a place of public accommodation” because of disability, and to fail to make reasonable accommodation for a known disability. Minnesota’s enforcement agency, the Department of Human Rights, treats inaccessible websites and digital resources as a public-accommodations problem.

• Damages that the federal ADA doesn’t offer. Title III gives a private plaintiff injunctive relief and attorney’s fees — but generally no money damages. The MHRA does. Minn. Stat. § 363A.29, subd. 4 provides for an aggrieved party to be paid “compensatory damages in an amount up to three times the actual damages sustained,” and further provides for “damages for mental anguish or suffering and reasonable attorney’s fees, in addition to punitive damages in an amount not more than $25,000.” That combination — a federal injunction stacked on state-law trebled compensatory damages, mental-anguish damages and fees — is what gives Minnesota demand letters their leverage.

There’s also Minn. Stat. § 16E.03, which requires state agencies to meet WCAG. It doesn’t bind private business, but it tells you which standard Minnesota treats as authoritative.

Who’s actually getting sued in Minnesota

Minnesota has become a national hotspot, not a backwater. Tracking by Seyfarth Shaw’s ADA Title III team and the EcomBack annual reports put Minnesota at roughly 114 federal website accessibility lawsuits in 2024 — third-highest in the country behind New York and Florida. The volume climbed again the following year: Seyfarth, which tracks federal website accessibility filings by state, recorded 162 federal website accessibility lawsuits in Minnesota in 2025 — fourth-highest in the country, behind only New York (1,021), Florida (961), and Illinois (585). Frost was decided in February of that year.

For how Minnesota’s share is tracking this year against the national total, see the 2026 mid-year ADA website lawsuit numbers.

The targets follow a pattern that is very specific to a transactional state economy:

• Ecommerce and direct-to-consumer brands — the exact profile of the Frost defendant. If a Minnesota shopper can’t complete a screen-reader checkout, that’s the claim. See our ecommerce accessibility guidance.
• Retail, food, and hospitality sites with online ordering or reservations.
• Small and mid-size businesses, not just nationals — plaintiffs’ firms file in volume, and a modest local site is a perfectly viable target.

The barriers cited are the same ones automated scanners and screen-reader testers find every day: images without alt text, forms a screen reader can’t complete, insufficient color contrast, and content you can’t reach with the keyboard. A plaintiff doesn’t have to prove a dollar of harm under Title III — only that the barrier blocked access.

How a Minnesota business reduces its exposure

Because Minnesota plaintiffs can plead both Title III and the MHRA’s money damages, half-measures are riskier here than almost anywhere. The defensible path is the same disciplined program we recommend everywhere — done for real, not faked with a widget.

1. Audit against WCAG 2.1 AA

Start with a manual accessibility audit measured against WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the standard the DOJ and courts consistently reference and the one W3C/WAI publishes. Automated scans catch only a fraction of failures; a human testing with NVDA, JAWS, and VoiceOver finds the unlabeled custom controls, broken reading order, and bad ARIA that plaintiffs actually cite. Want a fast first read? Run a free accessibility scan.

2. Remediate the real code — manually

This is the step that holds up when opposing counsel tests your site. Manual remediation changes the underlying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: real alt text, contrast that meets 4.5:1, full keyboard operability with visible focus, labeled form fields, and ARIA used only where native HTML can’t carry the load. Curbcut fixes these by hand, file by file. We are explicitly anti-overlay — accessibility widgets don’t fix source code, screen-reader users report they make sites harder to use, and overlay vendors have themselves been named in suits. See why overlays don’t work and our overlay vs. manual remediation breakdown.

3. Document — and keep documenting

After remediation, publish an accessibility statement describing your WCAG 2.1 AA conformance target and a way to report barriers, and keep a dated record of your audit and fixes. Documentation doesn’t grant immunity, but in a state where the MHRA puts trebled compensatory damages on the table alongside a federal injunction, evidence of good-faith, ongoing effort is exactly what you want on the record. Because Minnesota sites change constantly, pair it with accessibility monitoring so a new product page or untagged PDF doesn’t reopen the exposure. If a demand letter has already arrived, move faster — many resolve before a complaint is filed.

The bottom line for Minnesota

Frost v. Lion Brand took away the easiest argument a Minnesota online business had — “we have no physical store, so the ADA doesn’t apply” — at least in that court. Combine that with the MHRA’s trebled compensatory damages and Minnesota’s fourth-place filing volume, and the math is simple: real accessibility is far cheaper than a Minnesota lawsuit. Start with a free accessibility scan, then let the Curbcut team audit and remediate your site by hand so it’s defensible, not just decorated.