For Missouri businesses, the headline of 2026 is Senate Bill 907 — the “Act Against Abusive Website Access Litigation.” Signed by Gov. Mike Kehoe and operative August 28, 2026, it gives a defendant 90 days to fix an alleged barrier in good faith before a suit is presumed abusive. It does not, however, cancel the federal ADA.

Missouri’s distinct angle: a state law that fights back

Most states have watched ADA website filings climb and done nothing. Missouri did the opposite. After a steep surge in lawsuits, the legislature passed SB 907, sponsored by Sen. Brad Hudson, and the governor signed it into law — making Missouri one of the first states with a statute built specifically to deter what lawmakers called “abusive” or “predatory” website-access litigation (Missouri Senate SB 907; StateScoop).

The law’s mechanics matter more than its name. Under SB 907, if a business receives written notice of an alleged website or web-content access violation and in good faith initiates substantial steps to correct it within 90 days, a later lawsuit carries a rebuttable presumption that it is abusive (Seyfarth ADA Title III). If a court agrees a suit is abusive, it can order the plaintiff and the plaintiff’s attorneys to pay the defendant’s attorney’s fees and costs, plus punitive damages or sanctions of up to three times those fees. The Missouri Attorney General can also intervene or sue on behalf of targeted residents (Missouri Senate SB 907).

The catch: the presumption only protects you if you actually remediate. A 90-day window is worthless if you spend it shopping for a widget instead of fixing code. That’s the part this page exists to drive home.

This is general information, not legal advice. SB 907 is brand-new and its procedures are untested in court. Consult a qualified Missouri attorney before relying on the 90-day cure or any fee-shifting provision.

Why Missouri got a law at all: the filing surge

The legislation was a direct response to a sharp spike. Missouri went from a quiet jurisdiction to a national hotspot in roughly a year:

  • Seyfarth Shaw ranked Missouri sixth in the nation for 2025, with 86 federal website-accessibility lawsuits — up from a far smaller base the year before (Seyfarth / JD Supra).
  • Looking at both state and federal dockets, Seyfarth found that a single plaintiff, represented by one firm, filed every one of the 121 website-accessibility suits in Missouri across 2024 and 2025 (Seyfarth ADA Title III).
  • Local reporting put the jump at roughly 85 suits in 2025 versus 35 in 2024 — about a 143% increase, with one frequently named plaintiff, a blind Missouri veteran, tied to dozens of cases (Missouri Bar).

That concentration — nearly the entire state docket flowing through one plaintiff and firm — is exactly what the word “abusive” in SB 907 is aimed at. For national context, plaintiffs filed 3,117 federal website-accessibility lawsuits in 2025, a 27% jump over 2024’s 2,452 (Seyfarth / JD Supra). Missouri’s curve rose faster than the country’s.

The federal picture in the Eighth Circuit

Here’s what makes Missouri legally interesting: the federal question underneath these suits is unsettled here. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Missouri, has never ruled on whether a website is a “place of public accommodation” under ADA Title III (Missouri Bar). The only nearby signal came from a federal district court in Minnesota — also in the Eighth Circuit — which let a web-only business case proceed; we cover that in our Minnesota ADA website lawsuit guide.

The DOJ’s longstanding position is that public-facing business websites are covered when the business is otherwise a place of public accommodation, even though there’s no Title III website regulation on the books (ADA.gov). So a Missouri business sits in genuine uncertainty: there’s no binding Eighth Circuit precedent forcing coverage, but also none rejecting it — and plaintiffs keep filing because the cost of defending usually exceeds the cost of settling. The standard everyone points to remains WCAG 2.1 Level AA, the same benchmark Missouri itself adopted for state agencies under the Missouri IT Accessibility Standard (RSMo 161.935), which references Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 (BOIA).

Who’s getting sued in Missouri

The targets are not Fortune 500 companies. They are small and mid-sized Missouri businesses without in-house accessibility expertise, spread across the state from Kansas City to St. Louis (Missouri Bar). The complaints tend to be near-identical “cookie-cutter” filings, and the economics push defendants toward quick settlements that have been reported in the $5,000 to $20,000 range — money that largely goes to attorneys rather than into fixing the site (Missouri Bar). The recurring technical complaints are the usual barriers: missing alt text, unlabeled forms, thin color contrast, and controls you can’t reach by keyboard. For the pattern behind these filings, see our breakdown of serial ADA plaintiffs and typical settlements and costs.

How a Missouri business reduces exposure — and uses the 90 days

SB 907 rewards businesses that remediate. The cure period is only an advantage if you can show substantial good-faith steps within 90 days, and “good faith” means real code changes a court and a screen-reader user can verify. Here’s the sequence that builds that record.

1. Audit against WCAG 2.1 AA

Before — and especially the moment after — any demand letter, run a manual accessibility audit against WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Automated scanners catch only a slice of real failures; a human testing with NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver, and keyboard-only navigation finds the issues plaintiffs actually cite, like illogical reading order and broken name/role/value on custom controls. The audit also timestamps your starting point — useful evidence that your 90-day clock was spent on substance.

2. Remediate the real code (no overlay)

This is the step that satisfies “substantial steps to correct.” Curbcut’s accessibility remediation fixes the underlying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript by hand — adding meaningful alt text, repairing contrast to 4.5:1, labeling form fields and errors, and making every control keyboard-operable with a visible focus ring. An overlay does none of this: it leaves the source code untouched, and vendors have themselves been named in suits. A Missouri court weighing whether your effort was “good faith” will look at whether barriers are actually gone, not whether you installed a widget. See why overlays don’t work and overlay vs. manual remediation.

3. Document everything

Because SB 907 turns on good faith and a 90-day timeline, your paper trail is part of your defense. Keep the dated audit report, the remediation log, before/after test results, and a published accessibility statement describing your WCAG 2.1 AA target and a way to report barriers. If you’ve already received a notice, read what to do after an ADA demand letter first — and loop in counsel before the 90 days start ticking.

4. Monitor so you don’t backslide

A site that passes today fails after the next blog post, untagged PDF, or third-party booking widget. Ongoing accessibility monitoring catches regressions early, so a single new page doesn’t reopen your exposure after you’ve cured.

The bottom line for Missouri

Missouri is unusual: it’s both a filing hotspot and the home of one of the country’s first laws written to punish abusive website suits. But SB 907 is a shield for businesses that genuinely fix their sites — not a reason to ignore accessibility. The federal ADA still applies, the Eighth Circuit hasn’t closed the door, and the only durable protection is a site that actually works for disabled users. Find out where you stand with a free accessibility scan, then let Curbcut audit and remediate by hand so that if a notice arrives, your 90 days are already a head start. For deeper background, see the ADA website lawsuit pillar and our guide to making a site ADA compliant.