What Is Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act?

Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits state and local governments from discriminating against people with disabilities in any service, program, or activity they run. Signed into law on July 26, 1990 and strengthened by the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, it reaches every level of state and local government, whether or not the entity receives federal money. The rule underneath everything else is simple: a qualified person with a disability has the same right to participate in public services as anyone else.

Which Governments Are Covered

Title II applies to every “public entity,” defined by statute as any state or local government, and any department, agency, special purpose district, or other arm of state or local government.¹ Size does not matter, and federal funding does not matter. City councils, public universities, state courts, police departments, public libraries, transit agencies, county hospitals, parks departments, and public housing authorities are all inside the law. Jails and prisons are covered too, meaning programs from intake through medical care to reentry planning must be accessible to incarcerated people with disabilities.²

Two boundaries worth naming. Title II does not cover private businesses open to the public (that is Title III), and it does not cover the federal government (which is reached through the Rehabilitation Act).

Who the Law Protects

Title II protects any “qualified individual with a disability” — someone who has a disability and meets the basic eligibility requirements of the government program at issue, with or without reasonable modifications. For a lot of public services the eligibility bar is minimal. If a city gives out public records to anyone who asks, the only requirement is asking.³

There is one narrow carve-out. A public entity can exclude someone who poses a “direct threat” to the health or safety of others, but only after an individualized assessment based on current medical evidence that weighs the nature, severity, and likelihood of the risk, and whether a reasonable modification would eliminate it.³ Blanket exclusions of a category of people based on disability, rather than an individual’s actual risk, violate the law.

What Public Entities Must Do

The core prohibition is broad: no qualified individual with a disability can be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or subjected to discrimination by a public entity because of that disability.⁴ Beyond avoiding overt discrimination, entities must make reasonable modifications to policies and practices when necessary to give people with disabilities equal access. A county auditorium that bans outside food would still need to let a person with diabetes bring in what they need to manage blood sugar.

The one out is the “fundamental alteration” defense. An entity does not have to make a modification that would fundamentally change the nature of the program or impose an undue financial and administrative burden. But this cannot be decided offhand. The head of the entity, or a designee, must consider all available resources and put the reasons in writing.⁵ Even then, the entity has to find another way to provide access.

No Surcharges

An entity cannot pass the cost of accessibility on to the person who needs it. The regulations flatly prohibit surcharges on individuals with disabilities to cover auxiliary aids, program accessibility measures, or other required accommodations.⁶ If a court arranges a sign language interpreter for a hearing, the deaf party is not billed.

Service Animals

A service animal under Title II is a dog individually trained to do work or perform tasks tied to a person’s disability. When it isn’t obvious the dog is a service animal, staff may ask only two things: whether it is a service animal required because of a disability, and what task it has been trained to perform. They cannot ask about the disability, demand documentation, or ask for a demonstration.⁷ Entities must also consider allowing miniature horses as service animals where reasonable, based on housebreaking, control, the facility’s capacity for the animal’s size and weight, and safety.⁸ Pet fees are not allowed, though a handler can be charged for damage the animal actually causes.³

Physical Access to Buildings

For facilities that already exist, the rule is program accessibility: each program, viewed as a whole, must be readily accessible. Every building does not have to be retrofitted. A city with three recreation centers can offer the same programs at one accessible location instead of remodeling all three.⁵ The methods are flexible: redesigning equipment, reassigning services to accessible buildings, providing aides, delivering services at alternate locations, home visits, or structural alteration. Structural change is the last resort. When it is needed, the work must meet the accessibility standards for alterations.

Accessible features have to stay in working order. Elevators, ramps, and accessible restroom fixtures must be maintained; short interruptions for repair are fine, but a broken elevator left broken for months is not.⁹

For new construction and alterations, any project a public entity starts today must comply with the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design.¹⁰ Historic properties get some flexibility: an entity does not have to take action that would threaten or destroy a property’s historic significance, but it still has to find another way to give access to the programs housed there.

Effective Communication

Public entities must communicate with people who have vision, hearing, or speech disabilities as effectively as they communicate with everyone else, and when necessary they must provide auxiliary aids and services at no cost.¹¹ What that looks like depends on the person and the situation:

For people who are deaf or hard of hearing: qualified sign language interpreters, oral interpreters, real-time captioning, notetakers, written materials, assistive listening devices, and captioned telephones.
For people who are blind or have low vision: qualified readers, large-print documents, Braille materials, audio recordings, and electronic documents compatible with screen-reading software.
For people with speech disabilities: TTYs, videophones, communication boards, and other voice or text-based technology.

The entity has to give primary consideration to the person’s own preferred method. It can substitute a different effective option, but only if the preferred one would fundamentally alter the program or impose an undue burden.¹¹ The complexity of the interaction matters. A hospital handing a deaf patient a notepad for a surgical consent discussion is unlikely to meet the standard.

Websites and Mobile Apps

In April 2024, the Department of Justice finalized a rule making the point courts had been circling for years: state and local government websites and mobile apps must be accessible. The technical standard is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA.¹²

Compliance deadlines turn on the size of the entity:

Population of 50,000 or more: April 24, 2026.
Population under 50,000 and special district governments: April 26, 2027.

¹³ The rule has narrow exceptions, including for archived content stored in a designated archive area that has not been updated and is kept for reference or research, and for content posted by members of the public on a government platform. Content posted by government contractors or vendors is not excepted. Even where an exception applies, if a person with a disability needs the content and cannot access it, the entity may still owe an accessible version as a reasonable modification.

The Olmstead Integration Mandate

One of Title II’s most consequential applications came from the Supreme Court’s 1999 decision in Olmstead v. L.C., which held that unjustified segregation of people with disabilities in institutions is itself a form of discrimination under the law. States must place qualified individuals with disabilities in community settings, rather than institutions, when treatment professionals have determined community placement is appropriate, the person does not oppose it, and the placement can be reasonably accommodated.¹ The DOJ enforces the mandate actively, and it has driven decades of change in how states deliver mental health services, home- and community-based care, and housing.¹⁴

Internal Compliance Requirements

Title II builds in some administrative structure that a compliant government is supposed to have in place.

ADA Coordinator

Any public entity with 50 or more employees (counted government-wide, including part-time staff) must designate at least one employee to coordinate ADA compliance and investigate complaints, and must publish that person’s name, office address, and phone number.¹⁵

Grievance Procedure

Entities with 50 or more employees must also adopt and publish grievance procedures for prompt and equitable resolution of disability discrimination complaints.¹⁵ You do not have to exhaust that internal process before filing a federal complaint.

Transition Plan

When structural changes are needed to make programs accessible, an entity with 50 or more employees must develop a transition plan that identifies physical obstacles, describes the methods for removing them, sets a schedule, and names the official responsible. Entities that control streets or walkways must include a schedule for installing curb ramps, prioritizing routes to government offices, transit stops, and places of public accommodation.³ The transition plan must be available for public inspection.

How to Enforce Title II

There are two main routes if a public entity is not following the law.

File a Complaint With the DOJ

The Department of Justice’s Disability Rights Section enforces Title II through investigations, settlements, and litigation.¹⁶ A complaint must be filed within 180 days of the alleged discrimination.¹⁷ The DOJ also runs a mediation program that can resolve complaints faster than a full investigation, and it can bring its own lawsuits against public entities.

Sue in Federal Court

You do not have to file a DOJ complaint first. Title II incorporates the remedies from Section 505 of the Rehabilitation Act, so you can go directly to federal court and seek injunctive relief ordering the entity to stop discriminating or take specific corrective action.¹⁸ Title II has no statute of limitations of its own, so courts borrow the applicable state personal-injury deadline, which varies by state.

Compensatory damages are available, but only for intentional discrimination. Courts generally require at least “deliberate indifference” to your federally protected rights, a standard well above negligence. A government that tried in good faith and fell short is treated very differently from one that ignored repeated requests.

Attorney’s Fees

A court can award reasonable attorney’s fees, litigation expenses, and costs to the prevailing party in any ADA case.¹⁹ In practice, that benefits winning plaintiffs. Fees against a losing plaintiff are awarded only if the suit was frivolous or brought without reasonable basis, and the fee-shifting rule is what makes Title II enforcement financially realistic against a government defendant.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 12131 – Definitions
2
U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Examples and Resources to Support Criminal Justice Entities in Compliance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act
3
U.S. Department of Justice. Americans with Disabilities Act Title II Regulations
4
U.S. Department of Justice. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, As Amended – Section: Subchapter II – Public Services
5
eCFR. 28 CFR 35.150 – Existing Facilities
6
eCFR. 28 CFR 35.130 – General Prohibitions Against Discrimination
7
U.S. Department of Justice. Frequently Asked Questions about Service Animals and the ADA
8
U.S. Department of Justice. ADA Requirements: Service Animals
9
eCFR. 28 CFR 35.133 – Maintenance of Accessible Features
10
eCFR. 28 CFR 35.151 – New Construction and Alterations
11
ADA.gov (archive). Effective Communication
12
Federal Register. Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web Information and Services of State and Local Government Entities
13
U.S. Department of Justice. Fact Sheet: New Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps Provided by State and Local Governments
14
ADA.gov. Olmstead: Community Integration for Everyone
15
eCFR. 28 CFR 35.107 – Designation of Responsible Employee and Adoption of Grievance Procedures
16
United States Department of Justice. Disability Rights Section
17
U.S. Department of Justice. Guide to Disability Rights Laws
18
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 12133 – Enforcement
19
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 12205 – Attorneys Fees