Usually, yes — treat your online-only business as covered by the ADA. Federal appeals courts are split: in the First, Second, and Seventh Circuits (covering New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and their neighbors), a business that sells to the public is covered even with no physical location, while courts in the Third, Sixth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits have required a connection to a brick-and-mortar place. Because plaintiffs pick the courthouse — and they overwhelmingly pick the plaintiff-friendly ones — “no store” is not the legal shield most ecommerce founders think it is.
That’s the short version. Here’s the longer one, without the law-review prose.
Why is this even a question?
Because the ADA was written in 1990, before web commerce existed. Title III of the ADA bans discrimination by “places of public accommodation” and defines them through 12 categories of businesses — restaurants, hotels, retail stores, banks — that Congress described as “places,” “offices,” and “establishments.” As a Congressional Research Service legal sidebar from October 2022 puts it, those categories “were targeted at historically brick-and-mortar businesses,” and courts have struggled ever since with whether a website can be a “place.”
For a business with a storefront, the question barely matters: courts broadly agree the website is covered when it’s the front door to a physical business. The hard case — your case, if you run a pure ecommerce brand, a SaaS product, or an online service — is a business with no physical location a customer ever visits.
Which courts say a website alone is covered?
Courts in the First, Second, and Seventh Circuits have held that a public accommodation doesn’t need to be a physical place at all. The reasoning goes back to Carparts Distribution Center v. Automotive Wholesaler’s Association (1st Cir. 1994), decided before web stores existed: what matters is that a business offers goods or services to the public, not where it offers them. Courts in these circuits later applied that logic to web businesses — the CRS sidebar notes that under this line of cases, a plaintiff “must show only that the web site falls within a general category listed under the ADA.”
Practically, that camp covers Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island (First Circuit); New York, Connecticut, and Vermont (Second Circuit); and Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin (Seventh Circuit). If a plaintiff in one of those states can’t use your checkout with a screen reader, the fact that you have no building is not a defense there.
Which courts require a physical location?
The Ninth Circuit — California and most of the West — requires a “nexus” between the website and a physical place. In Robles v. Domino’s Pizza (9th Cir. 2019), the court held the ADA applied to Domino’s website precisely because its “alleged inaccessibility… impedes access to the goods and services of its physical pizza franchises — which are places of public accommodation” (Ninth Circuit opinion). The nexus was “critical” to the analysis. Flip that around: no physical franchise, no nexus, no Title III claim.
California’s state courts followed suit. In Martinez v. Cot’n Wash (2022), the California Court of Appeal dismissed a claim against an online-only detergent retailer, writing: “Under current law, we cannot read this phrase as including retail websites without any connection to a physical space” (opinion, Aug. 1, 2022). The Martinez court also noted that the physical-place view “has been adopted by courts in the Third, Sixth, Ninth, and Eleventh” Circuits.
One wrinkle: the Eleventh Circuit (Florida, Georgia, Alabama) issued a business-friendly ruling in Gil v. Winn-Dixie but later vacated it, so — per the CRS analysis — there’s no binding appellate precedent there, only decisions leaning toward requiring a nexus.
The circuit split, state by state
Here’s the map in table form, drawing on the CRS sidebar, the Martinez opinion, and NK Legal’s circuit-split analysis:
| Circuit | States | Is an online-only business covered? |
|---|---|---|
| First | Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island | Yes — no physical place required (Carparts, 1994) |
| Second | New York, Connecticut, Vermont | Yes in practice — district courts routinely let web-only claims proceed |
| Seventh | Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin | Yes — goods and services, not physical place, are what count (Doe v. Mutual of Omaha, 1999) |
| Third | Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware | No — physical place required |
| Sixth | Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee | No — physical place required |
| Ninth | California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington + AK, HI, ID, MT | No — nexus to a physical place required (Robles, 2019) |
| Eleventh | Florida, Georgia, Alabama | Unsettled — Winn-Dixie ruling vacated; courts lean toward requiring a nexus |
| Others (4th, 5th, 8th, 10th, D.C.) | Everywhere else | Undecided at the appellate level — district courts go both ways |
Two things to notice. First, the “yes” column contains the most litigious venues in the country. Second, the column that matters is not where you are — it’s where your customers are.
Why “no store” doesn’t mean “no lawsuit”
A plaintiff generally sues where they live, and your website goes everywhere. If a screen-reader user in Brooklyn can’t complete your checkout, they can file in New York under Second Circuit law — your Ninth Circuit headquarters doesn’t come with you. NK Legal makes the point bluntly: plaintiffs can sue in any state where a business does substantial commerce, so nexus-circuit companies stay exposed.
The filing data shows exactly this pattern. According to UsableNet’s January 2026 analysis, more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2025, ecommerce made up nearly 70% of them, and New York accounted for well over a third of state-level ADA website suits. Its warning to web businesses: “A physical presence is not required. If users in these states can access your website, courts are allowing cases to proceed.” We break down the full numbers in our 2025 lawsuit report, and the ecommerce-specific risk picture here.
So the honest answer to “no store, am I safe?” is: a nexus-circuit ruling might eventually win you a motion to dismiss — after months of defense costs — and only if the plaintiff filed in the wrong place. Serial plaintiffs’ firms don’t file in the wrong place.
What does the DOJ say about online-only businesses?
The Department of Justice has never squarely answered the question. Its March 18, 2022 guidance on web accessibility for businesses open to the public states that “the ADA’s requirements apply to all the goods, services, privileges, or activities offered by public accommodations, including those offered on the web” — and it points to WCAG as the relevant technical guidance. But as the CRS sidebar observes, the guidance “does not explicitly say whether the ADA reaches all websites, including online-only businesses,” while its language “appears to leave open the possibility that DOJ sees web businesses as public accommodations even if they have no connection to a physical business.”
Meanwhile, the DOJ has written a binding web rule — just not for you. Its April 2024 regulation requires state and local governments to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with compliance deadlines pushed to 2027 and 2028 by an April 2026 interim final rule (ADA.gov). We covered that rule and what it signals for private businesses in our Title II explainer. For private companies under Title III, there is still no regulation, no safe harbor, and no carve-out for web-only operations. Courts fill the gap — hence the split.
What should an online-only business actually do?
You can’t control which circuit a plaintiff files in. You can control whether their tester finds anything. Here’s the order we’d work in:
- Map your real exposure by customer geography, not headquarters. If you ship to New York, Illinois, or Massachusetts, plan as if the website-alone rule applies to you — because in those courts, it does.
- Run a baseline scan. A free automated scan catches the machine-detectable failures — missing alt text, broken labels, contrast — that show up in nearly every complaint.
- Test the money path by hand. Most ecommerce suits center on search, product pages, cart, and checkout. A manual audit tests those flows with a screen reader and keyboard, the way a plaintiff’s expert will.
- Fix the code against WCAG 2.1 AA. It’s the standard DOJ references and the one settlements are written to. Skip the overlay widget — they don’t stop lawsuits.
- Publish an accessibility statement and keep monitoring. New product launches and theme updates reintroduce barriers; catching them early is far cheaper than a demand letter.
None of this depends on how the circuit split resolves. An online store that meets WCAG 2.1 AA is defensible in every circuit — and usable by every customer who shops with a screen reader, a keyboard, or zoomed text. Those customers exist in your order data whether or not a court ever asks about them.
The circuit map above tells you where the law is friendliest. The filing data tells you plaintiffs choose those venues anyway. If you sell online, the safest reading is the simplest one: the ADA applies to you, so build like it does. Start with a free scan of your store.