FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: John Kabateck, California State Director, john@kabstrat.com
or Tony Malandra, Senior Media Manager, anthony.malandra@nfib.org

SACRAMENTO, Calif., July 14, 2025—With just days remaining until Friday’s deadline for policy committees to act on bills, it’s looking as if the most powerful lobby in the state has succeeded once again in stopping the mildest of legal reforms aimed at curbing the rampant misuse of the Americans With Disabilities Act to shakedown small business owners.

Despite the impressive bipartisan support Senate Bill 84 has received in its house of origin (passing 34-2) and at a well-attended news conference last Wednesday, it has stalled in the Assembly, stuck in its first committee. If a hearing date and a vote is not taken this week, it will be dead for the year.

Quite simply, SB 84 “would prohibit construction-related accessibility claims under the ADA and the Unruh Civil Rights Act from being initiated until a small business defendant has been served with a demand letter specifying each alleged violation and given 120 days to correct them,” according to a business-coalition letter in support of it. “This is common sense legislation that will provide meaningful protection for small businesses and greater access for the disability community.”

“Using the ADA to shakedown small business owners for payment to make an unfair lawsuit go away has been happening across the nation for a while,” said John Kabateck, state director for NFIB in California. “It’s an insidious industry.”

When the problem became an epidemic in Arizona, Mark Brnovich, then the state’s attorney general “took action in the Maricopa County Superior Court and filed to intervene in over 1,000 lawsuits initiated by an advocacy group that flooded courts with duplicative disability access lawsuits targeting mostly small businesses,” according to Wikipedia. “By intervening, the Attorney General’s office made itself a part of the cases and argued that the plaintiffs’ group, Advocates for Individuals with Disabilities, exceeded its legal authority and was not allowed to collect fees on these types of lawsuits. … In December 2016, the office filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuits and a judge granted the request in February 2017, dismissing over 1,000 of the lawsuits.”

Added Kabateck, “That’s the type of leadership you can only fantasize about in California. I do, however, commend the bipartisan group of senators who did the right thing and pass SB 84. It’s disgraceful what the Assembly is doing to it and will get away with it.”

Additional information

Sacramento radio station KFBK 1530-AM conducted this interview with Sen. Roger Niello, SB 84’s primary author, after last Wednesday’s news conference.

Keep up with the latest California small-business news at www.nfib.com. Follow us on X @NFIB_CA and on Facebook @NFIB.CA.

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For over 80 years, NFIB has been advocating on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, both in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals. NFIB is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and member-driven association. Since our founding in 1943, NFIB has been exclusively dedicated to small and independent businesses and remains so today. For more information, please visit nfib.com.

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