Missouri’s counter-suit law is a copy of Kansas’s 2023 act with the plaintiff protections removed. Here’s what changed, and what to watch.
On August 28, Missouri’s Act Against Abusive Website or Web Content Access Litigation took effect. Most coverage has described it as a 90-day remediation window for businesses facing web accessibility claims. Having read the statute rather than the summaries, I think that description is wrong in a way that matters, and the clearest way to show why is to put it next to the law it was copied from.
Kansas passed the Act Against Abusive Website Access Litigation in April 2023. Missouri’s act follows it section for section and keeps the name, with “or Web Content” inserted. In our May piece on the federal ACCESS Act I described the Kansas approach as targeted, proportionate, and self-limiting, and pointed to Missouri’s then-pending bill as more of the same.
The Kansas half of that holds up. The Missouri half doesn’t.
What both laws do
Neither law is a notice-and-cure requirement. Neither obliges a plaintiff to warn a business before filing. Both create something else: a separate cause of action that lets a defendant in a web accessibility suit file their own lawsuit, in state court, against the plaintiff and the plaintiff’s lawyer and firm, asking a judge to declare the original suit “abusive.” Remedies are attorney’s fees and costs, plus sanctions of up to three times the fees.
The accessibility case itself is untouched. If it’s a federal ADA case, as nearly all of them are, the federal court applies federal procedure and the state law has no effect on it. What the state law does is attach a second lawsuit to the person who filed the first one.
Both laws give the defendant a 90-day presumption of sorts (Kansas’s version keys on 30 days to begin a cure attempt). If the defendant takes good-faith steps to fix the barrier within the window, subsequent litigation is presumed abusive. The clock starts on written notice or on service of a complaint, whichever comes first, so a plaintiff who files without warning still starts it.
Both laws weigh a list of factors. Both expire when the Department of Justice issues web accessibility standards under Title III of the ADA. Both are untested: our team can’t find any court opinion, docket entry, or law firm alert reporting a single use of the Kansas act in the three years it has existed. County court records can’t be searched by cause of action, so a quiet filing is possible, but there is no visible one.
What changed
| Provision | Kansas (2023) | Missouri (2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose clause | Reaffirms equal-access policy; states the act “shall not be used to preclude a person with a disability from asserting their right to equal access” | None |
| Pre-clearance for legitimate claims | Plaintiff may obtain a written attorney general determination that their suit is not abusive, attach it to the petition, and earn a presumption of non-abusiveness | Removed. Attorney general may only intervene against plaintiffs or bring actions on behalf of defendants |
| Outcome of the accessibility case | Results “shall be weighed heavily, particularly if the litigation was resolved in favor of the plaintiff” | Removed |
| Proportionality factors | Court weighs the defendant’s size and resources, its ability to correct the barrier, whether venue was chosen as an obstacle, and whether the plaintiff and counsel are Kansas residents | All four removed |
| Who can counter-sue | Individuals residing in Kansas and entities registered in Kansas | Adds the state of Missouri and every political subdivision, including all boards, agencies, institutions, and authorities |
| What claims are covered | ADA, state law, “or any other similar allegation under state or federal law” | ADA “or under state law” only |
| Presumption target | “The subsequent initiation or continuance of litigation,” reaching the plaintiff’s own ongoing suit | “Any subsequent claim,” with “or continuance” removed and no limit to the original plaintiff |
| Sunset | Entire section expires when DOJ issues Title III web standards | Expires for registered entities and public bodies only; individual residents keep the right |
What each change might mean
I say “might” throughout. No court has construed either statute, and Missouri’s is two weeks old.
No path to legitimacy
Kansas built a front door for good-faith plaintiffs: get the attorney general to say in advance that your claim is legitimate, and you carry a presumption into any counter-suit.
Missouri’s plaintiffs have no equivalent. Their conduct can help them on the factors, particularly the one that asks whether they gave notice and an opportunity to correct, but nothing they do before filing can insulate them from being counter-sued. Under both laws the counter-suit is available against any accessibility litigation; Kansas simply gave careful plaintiffs a shield to bring with them, and Missouri didn’t.
Winning the accessibility case may count for nothing
This is the change I’d watch most closely. Missouri’s subsection 5 tracks Kansas’s almost verbatim, minus the sentence directing courts to weigh the result heavily when the plaintiff won. Read literally, a Missouri plaintiff could prevail on the merits in federal court, prove the barriers were real and unremedied, and gain no textual advantage in the state counter-suit.
Size doesn’t matter
Kansas’s stated target was out-of-state suits against small Kansas businesses, and its factors asked about the defendant’s resources and whether it could reasonably have fixed the site. Missouri removed those questions. A large registered corporation with an in-house accessibility team has the same counter-suit right, on the same terms, as a family shop.
Public bodies are armed
Every federal notice-and-cure bill since 1999, including this year’s H.R. 8396, amended only the Title III enforcement provision of the ADA. Kansas likewise limited its definition to public accommodations. Missouri’s counter-suit runs expressly to the state and all its political subdivisions: public universities, school districts, municipalities, state agencies. That is a Title II expansion no federal bill has ever proposed. If you are a Missouri public body, you now have a right your Kansas counterparts don’t.
The shield has a hole in it
Missouri’s definition of “access violation” covers allegations under the ADA “or under state law.” Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act is neither, and it’s the statute that public universities and other federally funded institutions are most exposed under, not least because Section 504 supports compensatory damages and Title III of the ADA doesn’t. Kansas’s catch-all language reaches Section 504 claims. Missouri’s doesn’t.
On the face of the text, a plaintiff who pleads Section 504 alone against a Missouri public university is outside the act entirely: no presumption, no counter-suit, no treble sanctions. Missouri extended the law to public bodies and then defined the trigger so their largest exposure falls outside it.
Also worth noting for the same institutions: the DOJ Title II web rule and the HHS Section 504 rule already set technical standards and deadlines for them, and the HHS deadline passed in May. The “no standard exists” rationale that underpins both laws doesn’t apply to the public sector at all.
Second plaintiffs may be the ones caught
Kansas aimed its presumption at the suit in front of it, “the subsequent initiation or continuance of litigation.” Missouri’s rewrite aims it at “any subsequent claim,” with no limit to the original plaintiff. The first plaintiff starts the defendant’s clock, so their claim isn’t “subsequent.” A second plaintiff, filing later and unaware of the first, may walk into a presumption of abusiveness they had no part in creating.
Whether that’s intended or a drafting artifact, I can’t say. But it’s what the text does.
National reach
Both laws define “resident” to include any entity registered with the secretary of state, which means registered to do business there, not incorporated there, so every out-of-state company with a Missouri store, office, or workforce qualifies. A Missouri-registered corporation sued in New York or Florida, which between them produced nearly two thousand federal web accessibility filings in 2025, could file its counter-suit in Missouri.
Whether a Missouri court can compel an out-of-state plaintiff and firm to appear is an open personal-jurisdiction question, and it’s likely the first thing a defending firm would argue.
The sunset that probably never comes
Both acts expire when DOJ issues Title III web standards. DOJ has been asked for those for two decades and has just extended its Title II compliance dates to 2027. Kansas’s sunset at least covers everyone. Missouri’s leaves individual residents’ counter-suit right in place permanently.
What to watch
- The first filing. Nobody has visibly used the Kansas law in three years. Missouri’s is broader, applies to litigation pending on its effective date, and puts the state’s public institutions among the potential plaintiffs. If it gets used, the first case will tell us more than any analysis, and the questions it would answer are 1. whether “the party” in the remedies subsection reaches counsel or only the plaintiff; 2. how a court decides a site was “corrected, as determined by the court” against no named standard; and 3. whether the missing merits sentence is read back in.
- Whether plaintiffs route around it. If the Section 504 gap is real, I’d expect to see claims against Missouri’s federally funded institutions pleaded under 504 alone. That would be a measurable shift.
- Whether anyone challenges it. Filing a lawsuit is protected petitioning activity, and a state law that penalizes the exercise of a federal private right of action raises preemption questions. I’ve found no commentator raising either against Missouri’s act, and no challenge to Kansas’s. A challenge would take years. In the meantime the law operates by existing.
- Whether the next state copies Kansas or copies Missouri. This is now model legislation on its second state. The template that spreads from here is the one with the deletions in it.
For organizations
If you’re registered in Missouri, you have a new right and it’s narrower than it sounds. It doesn’t stay or affect an accessibility suit against you. It doesn’t reach Section 504 claims. Its 90-day presumption requires you to actually correct the barriers within 90 days to a court’s satisfaction, not just to start. And it hands you a second piece of litigation to fund and wait through, since the counter-suit’s judgment can’t issue until the underlying case concludes.
None of that is a compliance strategy. Fixing the website is cheaper than either lawsuit, it’s the only thing that satisfies the presumption anyway, and for public bodies the Title II and Section 504 deadlines apply regardless of anything in this act. The counter-suit is a tool for after you’ve been sued. The work that keeps you from being sued hasn’t changed.
I pointed to this law approvingly in May, before the text was final and before I’d read it. The text is one section, it’s in HTML, and it takes ten minutes to read it. I’ll be watching what happens to it.
