MedStar Health
DC and Maryland's largest hospital system paid $440,000 for digital accessibility failures.
MedStar Health operates dozens of hospitals across Washington DC and Maryland. The DOJ found that disabled patients faced barriers using MedStar's online portals, scheduling systems, and digital communications. In 2024, MedStar agreed to a consent decree paying $440,000 in compensation to affected individuals.
Importantly, the decree required full WCAG 2.1 AA compliance across all MedStar's patient-facing digital systems. Healthcare systems are increasingly being held to the same standards as government — full digital accessibility, not just a website with a wheelchair logo. The financial penalty was modest. The engineering work was substantial.
Settlement
$440,000 to compensate affected individuals; $0 civil penalt…
Court
District of Maryland
Case
United States v. MedStar Health, Inc.
1:24-cv-00302
Outcome
settled
What went wrong on the site
Each visual below shows what visitors with disabilities actually experienced.
Multiple WCAG 2.1 AA violations across the site
Multiple violations across the full WCAG 2.1 Level AA spec — the site failed to meet the federal de-facto standard for accessibility.
WCAG WCAG 2.1 AA
Sources & documentation
- DOJ — Justice Department Secures Agreement with MedStar Health Inc. (Jan 31, 2024)Primary
- DOJ Civil Rights Division — US v. MedStar Health case pagePrimary
- DOJ — Complaint, U.S. v. MedStar Health, Inc. (Jan 10, 2024)Primary
- DOJ — Consent Decree, U.S. v. MedStar Health, Inc. (Jan 17, 2024)Primary
- DOJ — USAO-MD Press Release — $440,000 Agreement (Jan 31, 2024)Primary
- Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse — United States v. MedStar Health, 1:24-cv-00302Primary
- Washington Post — MedStar agrees to deal in federal disability discrimination case
Is your site exposed like MedStar's was?
Run a free scan to find out which of these violations exist on your site right now.
Scan my siteAll Healthcare cases
See the full healthcare risk landscape
Other cases, top WCAG failures for healthcare, and what to fix first.
More B2B cases
Healthcare
University of North Carolina Health Care System
NFB and Disability Rights NC won a $125,000 settlement against UNC Health (2022) for systematically denying blind patients accessible medical records, billing, and forms; a 2023 federal injunction then required a system-wide overhaul of patient communications.
Accounting
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
DOJ forced the AICPA and NASBA — the accounting profession's own gatekeepers — to make the Uniform CPA Exam accessible to blind candidates, paying $15,000+ in damages and integrating JAWS and ZoomText across the entire exam platform.
Insurance
California Department of Insurance
Blind insurance agent candidates sued California's insurance licensing authority and its testing vendor PSI Services for making the online exam unusable by screen readers — a 2024 settlement forced PSI to make the platform independently accessible and barred CDI from demanding medical documentation as a precondition.