Someone using a wheelchair cannot get into a Minneapolis restaurant because the only entrance has two steps and no ramp. Someone who is deaf asks a clinic for an interpreter and is told to bring a family member. A store tells a customer with a service animal to leave.
Each of those is potentially a public accommodations claim, and each can be brought under two different statutes. The statutes forbid nearly the same things. What they pay is not close.
The remedy difference, stated precisely
Under Title III of the ADA, a private plaintiff does not recover damages. That is not a judicial gloss; it is what the enforcement section says. Title III’s private remedy, 42 U.S.C. § 12188(a)(1), provides that “[t]he remedies and procedures set forth in section 2000a–3(a) of this title are the remedies and procedures this subchapter provides to any person who is being subjected to discrimination on the basis of disability in violation of this subchapter . . . .” Section 2000a–3(a), in turn, authorizes “a civil action for preventive relief, including an application for a permanent or temporary injunction, restraining order, or other order.” The Department of Justice’s implementing regulation says the same thing in the same words: a person subjected to Title III discrimination “may institute a civil action for preventive relief.” 28 C.F.R. § 36.501(a).
Money appears in Title III only in the government’s hands. Section 12188(b)(2)(B) authorizes a court, in an action brought by the Attorney General, to “award such other relief as the court considers to be appropriate, including monetary damages to persons aggrieved when requested by the Attorney General” — and § 12188(b)(4) forecloses punitive damages even there: “For purposes of subsection (b)(2)(B), the term ‘monetary damages’ and ‘such other relief’ does not include punitive damages.”
What a private Title III plaintiff can get is an injunction and, under 42 U.S.C. § 12205, a discretionary award to the prevailing party of “a reasonable attorney’s fee, including litigation expenses, and costs.”
The Minnesota Human Rights Act is different. A civil action under Minn. Stat. § 363A.33 carries, by subdivision 6, an express jury right: “A person bringing a civil action seeking redress for an unfair discriminatory practice or a respondent is entitled to a jury trial.” Subdivision 8(a) directs that where the court finds an unfair discriminatory practice, it “shall order the respondent to pay an aggrieved party who has suffered discrimination compensatory damages, including mental anguish or suffering, in an amount up to three times the actual damages sustained,” permits punitive damages under Minn. Stat. § 549.20, and requires a civil penalty payable to the state. Subdivision 7 allows the prevailing party a reasonable attorney’s fee in the court’s discretion.
Same barrier. Same refusal. One statute orders a ramp; the other can order a ramp, compensatory damages up to three times actual damages, and punitive damages. For a Minnesota plaintiff, that is usually the whole analysis. The broader comparison between the state and federal tracks is in MHRA or federal: choosing your forum.
What counts as a place of public accommodation
The two statutes get there by opposite drafting techniques.
Minnesota uses one functional sentence. Minn. Stat. § 363A.03, subd. 34, defines “place of public accommodation” as “a business, accommodation, refreshment, entertainment, recreation, or transportation facility of any kind, whether licensed or not, whose goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations are extended, offered, sold, or otherwise made available to the public.”
The ADA uses a closed list. Section 12181(7) enumerates twelve categories of private entities that “are considered public accommodations for purposes of this subchapter, if the operations of such entities affect commerce” — lodging; establishments serving food or drink; places of exhibition or entertainment; places of public gathering; sales or rental establishments; service establishments (a list that expressly includes the “office of an accountant or lawyer,” a pharmacy, an insurance office, and a hospital); transportation terminals; places of public display or collection; places of recreation; private schools; social service center establishments; and places of exercise or recreation.
Two consequences follow.
First, Title III covers only private entities. “Private entity” means “any entity other than a public entity” as defined in § 12131(1). A city, a county, or a state agency is not a Title III defendant; it is a Title II defendant. Minnesota draws the same line differently: § 363A.11 governs places of public accommodation, while § 363A.12 governs “public service[s]” — a category defined at § 363A.03, subd. 35, to include facilities and departments “owned, operated or managed by or on behalf of the state of Minnesota, or any subdivision thereof.”
Second, whether a website with no physical premises is a place of public accommodation is genuinely contested, and this article is not going to pretend otherwise. Both definitions are anchored in language of place — the ADA’s twelve categories are all physical establishments, and Minnesota’s definition speaks of a “facility of any kind.” Federal courts of appeals have divided on the question. We did not locate controlling Eighth Circuit or Minnesota appellate authority resolving it, and anyone told confidently that the answer is settled in Minnesota should ask to see the case.
What § 363A.11 forbids
Subdivision 1(a)(1) states the core prohibition: it is an unfair discriminatory practice “to deny any person the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of a place of public accommodation because of race, color, creed, religion, disability, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, sex, or gender identity, or for a taxicab company to discriminate in the access to, full utilization of, or benefit from service because of a person’s disability.”
Note that this list is not the same as the housing list. The public accommodations classes do not include familial status or status with regard to public assistance, both of which are protected in housing under § 363A.09. The MHRA’s protected classes vary by section, and reciting a single remembered list across the chapter is a reliable way to be wrong.
Subdivision 1(a)(2) adds an affirmative duty: it is an unfair discriminatory practice “for a place of public accommodation not to make reasonable accommodation to the known physical, sensory, or mental disability of a disabled person.” The statute then supplies six reasonableness factors, including how frequently the public will be served by the accommodation at that location, the size of the business at that location, the type of operation, and “the nature and amount of both direct costs and legitimate indirect costs of making the accommodation and the reasonableness for that location to finance the accommodation.”
Subdivisions 2 and 3 track the ADA’s structure closely. Among the specific prohibitions in subdivision 3 are the “failure to make reasonable modifications in policies, practices, or procedures when the modifications are necessary to afford the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations to individuals with disabilities, unless the entity can demonstrate that making the modifications would fundamentally alter the nature” of what is offered; the failure to provide auxiliary aids and services absent fundamental alteration and undue burden; and the “failure to remove architectural barriers, and communication barriers that are structural in nature, in existing facilities . . . if the removal is readily achievable.” Where removal is not readily achievable, subdivision 3(5) requires making the goods and services “available through alternative means if the means are readily achievable.”
Two limits are worth knowing before filing. Subdivision 1(b) provides that “State or local building codes control where applicable. Violations of state or local building codes are not violations of this chapter and must be enforced under normal building code procedures.” And subdivision 4 supplies a direct-threat defense: nothing in the chapter requires an entity to admit an individual who “poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others,” defined as “a significant risk to the health or safety of others that cannot be eliminated by a modification of policies, practices, or procedures or by the provision of auxiliary aids or services.”
The federal counterpart to all of this is 42 U.S.C. § 12182(a): “No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation.”
The Minnesota notice requirement that ends cases
This is the provision most likely to sink a Minnesota accessibility case, and it is not well known.
Minn. Stat. § 363A.331, subd. 2(a), provides that before bringing a civil action under § 363A.33, “a person who is an attorney or is represented by an attorney” who alleges that a business establishment or place of public accommodation has violated accessibility requirements “must provide a notice of architectural barrier.” The notice must be dated and must (1) cite the law alleged to be violated; (2) “identify each architectural barrier that is the subject of an alleged violation and specify its location on the premises”; (3) “provide a reasonable time for a response, which may not be less than 60 days”; and (4) comply with the statutory short form in subdivision 3.
Paragraph (b) forbids the notice from including “a request or demand for money or an offer or agreement to accept money,” though it may offer to negotiate. Paragraph (c) is the bar: “A civil action may not be brought before expiration of the period to respond provided in the notice . . . .” And paragraph (d) extends the wait by another 30 days if the business responds in writing with an intent to remove the barrier but shows that weather prevents timely removal and specifies the steps and the completion date.
Subdivision 2a covers the plaintiff who files unrepresented and then retains counsel within 60 days. The content required there is narrower than the pre-suit notice: the attorney must provide “the items required under subdivision 2, paragraph (a), clauses (1) and (2)” — the law cited, and each barrier identified with its location — “and the accessibility audit portion of the form under subdivision 3,” but not subdivision 2(a)’s response-time clause. The defendant then gets at least 60 days after the notice or service of the complaint, whichever is later, to answer or amend, and proceedings are stayed for that period. Subdivision 5 exempts three groups from the notice requirement — a person who is not an attorney and is not represented by one, attorneys for the state or a political subdivision, and a person challenging a finding in an audit prepared by a certified professional.
“Accessibility requirements under law” is defined in subdivision 1(b) to mean the barrier-removal requirements of § 363A.11, subd. 3, clause (4) or (5); 42 U.S.C. § 12182(b)(2)(A)(iv) or (v); or 28 C.F.R. §§ 36.304 or 36.305. So the notice obligation reaches a case pleaded under the ADA as well as one pleaded under the MHRA, so long as it is an architectural-barrier case brought by counsel.
Subdivision 4 then puts a thumb on the scale at the merits stage. A defendant has an affirmative defense if it shows the barrier has been removed in compliance, that compliance “is not readily achievable or cannot be accomplished by alternative means,” or that the alleged barrier does not violate the requirements. And where a certified professional’s audit finds compliance — or finds that compliance is not readily achievable — a plaintiff challenging that finding “has the burden to show” otherwise.
The waiting period is not lost time on the limitations clock: Minn. Stat. § 363A.28, subd. 3(c), suspends the running of the MHRA limitation period “during the applicable time period under section 363A.331, subdivision 2, during which a civil action may not be brought.” The chapter’s timing rules are otherwise unforgiving and are mapped in our article on the MHRA’s deadlines.
Practical consequences
If the goal is to get a barrier removed, either statute will do, and the ADA’s nationwide standards and DOJ regulations are often the cleaner vehicle for defining what compliance looks like.
If the client has been actually harmed — turned away, humiliated, injured, made to miss a medical appointment — the ADA alone will not compensate that. The MHRA can. In practice that argues for pleading both, satisfying § 363A.331 before filing anything, and understanding that fee exposure exists on both sides of the case: § 12205 and § 363A.33, subd. 7, are each written as prevailing-party provisions. The broader map of Minnesota fee-shifting statutes is here.
Working with Madgett Law
Madgett Law, LLC handles civil rights litigation, including disability access and public accommodations claims, in Minnesota state and federal court, alongside the firm’s personal injury and general civil litigation practice. These cases are won on specifics — the measurement, the date, the name of the employee, the photograph taken the day it happened. If you were denied access to a business or a service because of a disability, you can send us a message or call 612-470-6529. No outcome is promised or implied.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 363A.03, subds. 34, 35; § 363A.11, subds. 1(a)(1), 1(a)(2), 1(b), 2, 3, 4; § 363A.12; § 363A.28, subd. 3(c); § 363A.33, subds. 6, 7, 8(a); § 363A.331, subds. 1(b), 2, 2a, 3, 4, 5; § 549.20 (revisor.mn.gov, pulled directly). 42 U.S.C. § 12131(1); § 12181(6), (7); § 12182(a); § 12188(a)(1), (b)(2)(B), (b)(4); § 12205; § 2000a–3(a), (b) (uscode.house.gov, current through Aug. 1, 2026). 28 C.F.R. § 36.501(a) (eCFR, title 28 current as of July 30, 2026).
This article is general information about Minnesota and federal law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and it does not promise or imply any particular outcome. Consult a lawyer about your own situation.