Case: National Federation of the Blind v. Department of Justice

(This summary is temporary while we research the case further). On May 21, 2026, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland against the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Acting Attorney General, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its Secretary. The suit challenged two interim final rules issued by DOJ and HHS that extended, by one year, compliance deadlines for website and mobile application accessibility standards originally established in 2024 under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Those Final Rules had required state and local governments and recipients of federal financial assistance to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 Level AA standard, and were the product of years-long regulatory processes involving public notices, comment periods, and cost-benefit analyses. DOJ issued its interim final rules on April 20, 2026—four days before the first compliance deadline—and HHS issued its interim final rules on May 11, 2026, the same day its first deadline took effect; neither agency provided prior public notice or opportunity for comment. The NFB alleged that the interim final rules violated the Administrative Procedure Act because the agencies bypassed required notice-and-comment procedures, relied on information that was not new, failed to meaningfully consider harms to blind individuals, and acted in furtherance of the Trump Administration's deregulatory agenda rather than on genuine good cause. The complaint described concrete harms to NFB members, including a blind member in Illinois unable to complete an unemployment application, a blind member in North Carolina forced to hire a registered agent to access state business services, and a blind member in Kentucky turned away from telehealth due to an inaccessible form. The NFB sought vacatur of both IFRs, a declaratory judgment that the IFRs are unlawful, and attorney's fees and costs.