CRA

Posted Jan 5, 2026 18:26 UTC (Mon) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
In reply to: CRA by linuxrocks123
Parent article: Kroah-Hartman: Linux kernel security work

> In addition to California, I may want to make it a triple play by blocking New York and Florida, too, to avoid being sued by the human skid marks who abuse the ADA to suck settlement money out of random small businesses: [link]

The ADA is a federal law. Lawsuits under the ADA may be brought in any state, if there is personal jurisdiction over the defendant and venue is proper in that state. The Second Circuit case Bensusan Restaurant Corp. v. King suggests that merely having a website accessible from the forum state is probably not enough for personal jurisdiction, but it was decided in 1997, so things may have changed since then. See also International Shoe Company v. Washington.

Regardless, geoblocking one state will not prevent lawsuits from other states. If geoblocking is necessary (contrary to the Second Circuit's ruling), then you have to block the whole US (and avoid doing business in the US, which probably has implications for hosting etc.).

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CRA

Posted Jan 8, 2026 15:57 UTC (Thu) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

> The ADA is a federal law.

Yes, but there's a huge-ass circuit split as to whether websites are always subject to the ADA, only subject to the ADA if there is a physical brick-and-mortar business they're connected to, or never subject to the ADA. If you can force the bottom-feeder into a circuit that says websites are never subject to the ADA, the bottom-feeder will drop the case and leave you alone because he and you both know he can't possibly win.

I hope the current Supreme Court takes up a case on this issue soon, because the current Court will probably decide "never," and I think that's the right answer because anything else is an unacceptable speech regulation. Or would it be constitutional for Congress to pass a law that says newspapers must be printed in Braille upon request?

> The Second Circuit case Bensusan Restaurant Corp. v. King suggests that merely having a website accessible from the forum state is probably not enough for personal jurisdiction

No, Bensusan v. King decided that New York hadn't given its own courts that jurisdiction under New York state law. The federal question the district court answered in violation of constitutional avoidance was not affirmed by the circuit. A better case to look at is Zippo v. Zippo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zippo_Manufacturing_Co._v._...

It's a district court case but was adopted by several circuits in the years following its decision. It promulgates a "sliding scale" test that says you're not subject to jurisdiction if your website is purely passive, are if your website is "extremely interactive," and might or might not be if your website is somewhere in the middle, depending on where in the middle you are.