{"id":782426,"date":"2026-05-08T17:37:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T17:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/782426\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T17:37:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T17:37:16","slug":"opinion-ab-2190-misses-the-mark-on-accessibility-and-risks-fueling-lawsuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/782426\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: AB 2190 misses the mark on accessibility \u2014 and risks fueling lawsuits"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"San<\/a>The defendant\u2019s chairs in a courtroom at San Diego\u2019s Central Courthouse. (Photo by Thomas Murphy\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

California has long prided itself on leading the nation in advancing civil rights and accessibility for individuals with disabilities. That commitment is both important and necessary. But good intentions alone do not make good policy \u2014 and Assembly Bill 2190<\/a>, as currently drafted, risks doing more harm than good.<\/p>\n

\"Opinion<\/a><\/p>\n

AB 2190 seeks to address website accessibility under the Unruh Civil Rights Act, an area in dire need of clarity and modernization. Businesses across California want to comply with accessibility standards and ensure their digital platforms are inclusive. However, this bill fails to provide a workable framework to achieve that goal. Instead, it creates new legal exposure, increases uncertainty, and opens the door to more litigation, ultimately leading to higher costs for consumers.<\/p>\n

While AB 2190 attempts to establish liability protections for businesses that proactively address accessibility issues, those protections are largely illusory. The bill conditions an affirmative defense on requirements that, in many cases, are impractical or even impossible to meet. For example, a business must identify and publicly disclose accessibility issues \u2014 and have already fixed them \u2014 before a complaint is filed in order to qualify for protection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This creates a perverse incentive: businesses that are transparent about ongoing improvements may actually increase their litigation risk, while those that remain silent face fewer immediate consequences. That\u2019s not a system that encourages compliance \u2014 it\u2019s one that discourages it.<\/p>\n

The bill also imposes burdensome obligations on businesses, including continuous monitoring, ongoing compliance with federal standards, and liability for third-party content beyond a business\u2019s control. For many small and mid-sized businesses, these requirements are simply not feasible. Instead of increasing accessibility, this dynamic would only create more legal vulnerability.<\/p>\n

Moreover, AB 2190 would require businesses to respond to accessibility complaints within 48 hours and complete reviews within five business days, regardless of the complexity of the issue. Anyone familiar with web development or digital compliance knows that meaningful fixes can take time, coordination and technical expertise. Imposing arbitrary deadlines without flexibility sets businesses up for failure.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most concerning is the bill\u2019s redefinition of \u201cintentional discrimination\u201d under the Unruh Act. Under AB 2190, a business could be deemed to have acted intentionally simply by failing to remediate an issue within an unspecified timeframe after receiving notice. This fundamentally lowers the legal threshold for proving intent and raises serious due process concerns, turning what should be a cooperative compliance process into a litigation trap.<\/p>\n

California has already struggled with abusive litigation practices in the accessibility space \u2014 particularly under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Rather than addressing these concerns, AB 2190 risks expanding them by creating new causes of action for lawsuits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is a better path forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Policymakers should focus on implementing standards that are realistic, clear and provide reasonable timelines for businesses to fix problems. A balanced approach would include meaningful notice-and-cure provisions, safe harbors for good-faith compliance efforts, and realistic expectations based on business size and resources.<\/p>\n

Accessibility should not be weaponized as a litigation tool. It should be a shared goal \u2014 one that brings businesses and the disability community together to create real, lasting improvements.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers should oppose AB 2190 unless it is amended to make the affirmative defenses workable, set clear liability standards, and establish feasible remediation timelines \u2013 otherwise the bill risks undermining both fairness and accessibility for the people of California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Victor Gomez is executive director of California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The defendant\u2019s chairs in a courtroom at San Diego\u2019s Central Courthouse. (Photo by Thomas Murphy\/Times of San Diego)…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":782427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[320120,19851,5229,1582,276,320121,336,27466,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,27241],"class_list":["post-782426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-ab-2190","tag-accessibility","tag-america","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-california-citizens-against-lawsuit-abuse","tag-lawsuits","tag-litigation","tag-san-diego","tag-sandiego","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-websites"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116540175701530413","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}