Gil v Winn-Dixie: The 2021 Panel Opinion Was Vacated as Moot

Gil v Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. is often summarized using an April 2021 Eleventh Circuit panel opinion. That summary is incomplete: on 28 December 2021, the court granted rehearing, held the appeal moot, vacated its earlier opinion and the underlying judgment, dismissed the appeal, and remanded for dismissal. A vacated opinion is not binding precedent.

The facts

Juan Carlos Gil is a Cuban-American Florida resident who has cerebral palsy and is legally blind. He uses screen-reader software (JAWS) to navigate the web. In 2016 he sued Winn-Dixie, a large grocery-store chain operating physical stores throughout the southeastern United States, alleging that winndixie.com was inaccessible to him as a screen-reader user.

Specifically, Gil alleged he could not use the website to:

• Refill his prescriptions for in-store pickup.
• Access the digital coupons that were available only on the website.
• Find store locations and hours in a screen-reader-accessible format.

Gil could not complete those tasks at the website level, so he could not access services that were available only through the website — even though Winn-Dixie's physical stores were accessible.

The 2017 trial-court verdict

The case went to a bench trial in the Southern District of Florida. Judge Robert Scola Jr. ruled for Gil. The court ordered Winn-Dixie to:

• Make its website conform to WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
• Implement an accessibility-policy training program for its web developers and content vendors.
• Set up ongoing testing and a feedback mechanism for users with disabilities.

The judgment became part of the developing website-accessibility case law, but later procedural events are essential to understanding its status.

The April 2021 panel opinion

Winn-Dixie appealed. In April 2021 the Eleventh Circuit reversed the district-court judgment.

The Eleventh Circuit's reasoning rested on textual interpretation of ADA Title III's statutory definition of "place of public accommodation". The list in the statute (12 enumerated categories) consists entirely of physical locations: "an inn, hotel, motel," "a restaurant," "a hardware store," etc. Reading the list as the legislature wrote it, the court concluded that "place" means a physical place — and a website is not a physical place.

The court further held that the website was not a "service" of Winn-Dixie's physical stores in the relevant sense, because the website itself was not the conduit for accessing the in-store goods and services in a way that would make its inaccessibility a denial of equal access to those goods and services.

The now-vacated panel opinion reasoned that:

• The ruling was an interpretation of the statutory text, not a policy preference. Congress could amend the ADA to explicitly reach websites at any time.
• The ruling did not foreclose all ADA web-accessibility theories — only the theory that the website itself is a place of public accommodation. Plaintiffs could still bring claims under other theories where the website is a barrier to accessing physical-location goods or services.
• The ruling did not affect state-law claims (e.g. the California Unruh Civil Rights Act, where Robles also brought claims) which are independent of ADA Title III.

The December 2021 vacatur controls the citation status

The court later granted rehearing because the injunction had expired and no formal declaratory relief remained. It vacated the April opinion and the underlying judgment, dismissed the appeal, and remanded for dismissal as moot. That means the April reasoning may be discussed as procedural history, but it cannot honestly be advertised as binding Eleventh Circuit precedent or used to assign a merchant a circuit-level risk score.

What Gil means for Shopify merchants

For a Shopify merchant, the reliable lessons are procedural and operational:

1. Check current controlling authority. Do not rely on a quotation without checking whether the opinion was vacated, superseded, reheard, or appealed.
2. Separate legal frameworks. Federal Title III, state civil-rights law, and European accessibility rules have different coverage, exemptions, remedies, and geographic reach.
3. Test the actual customer journey. Product information, store services, forms, cart, account, and checkout can present barriers regardless of which legal theory applies.
4. Keep claims factual. Automated findings and AccessComply change records describe a tested scope and work performed; they do not establish legal compliance or a defense.

Why the case became moot

The December 2021 order identifies the expiration of the injunction while the appeal was pending and the absence of a formal declaratory-relief award as the basis for mootness. It does not attribute mootness to a later bankruptcy. Read that two-page disposition together with any archived panel opinion.

Further reading

• Gil v Winn-Dixie — December 2021 order vacating the opinion and judgment as moot
• Gil v Winn-Dixie — archived April 2021 panel opinion (vacated; not binding)
• Andrews v Blick Art Materials, LLC — Eastern District of New York website-as-place-of-public-accommodation ruling (2017)
• AccessComply: Robles v Domino's deep-dive
• AccessComply: ADA lawsuits against ecommerce stores
• AccessComply: How to respond to an ADA demand letter