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This is a fine article by Nina Roberts, but it might have been nice if Guardian readers and their US equivalents had thought about the disproportionate burden of “equality” laws on small businesses (as opposed to large businesses who have whole floors full of hotshot lawyers) forty years ago.
Slew of lawsuits over disability access frustrates US cafe and shop owners
Rodrigo Nogueira was met with a surprise in April 2025 when lawyers contacted him out of the blue. They asked whether he needed legal assistance over a summons his restaurant received for violating Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
It was the first he had ever heard of it. The lawsuit listed 35 violations against No More Cafe, his restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village.
One violation alleged a table outside the restaurant was not ADA compliant, an accusation that puzzled Nogueira: the cafe had no outdoor tables. Other alleged violations were about infractions inside the restaurant, yet the plaintiff said he was unable to enter the restaurant.
When Nogueira researched the lawsuit, he discovered that the plaintiff who sued him and the plaintiff’s lawyer had filed complaints against dozens of small businesses. The attorney who filed the lawsuit against him alone had filed more than 100 ADA lawsuits over the past nine years against storefront businesses.
Nogueira, sitting at a table in his café, said: “The [plaintiff] that’s suing me – he’s got 67 cases.”
Before possibly hiring a lawyer, Nogueira filed a motion to dismiss the case himself. But the judge said a company cannot represent itself in court. For small businesses, thousands of dollars in lawyers fees to just file a motion, can be prohibitively costly.
Frustrated with the process, Nogueira sought to speak with other small business owners. He went through public court records and found nearby businesses that were also being sued for ADA noncompliance.
“Every business owner I spoke to had opened within the last year or two. Every one of them was an immigrant,” Nogueira, who is from Brazil, wrote in a post on his website about the lawsuit. “None of us had any idea how to navigate the federal court system. Most were already several thousand dollars into legal fees by the time we talked. Several of them did not realize they had been sued until the deadline to respond had already passed.”
