What Does the Americans with Disabilities Act Say about Service and Emotional Support Animals?

Three Classes of Animals

1. Pets are animals living with owners for purposes of love, affection, and company.
2. Emotional Support Animals provide some therapeutic benefit to persons with mental or psychiatric disability, requiring no specific training. The mere presence of this animal mitigates the effects of the emotional or mental disability.
3. Service Animals are any animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a physical, intellectual, or mental disability (i.e., guiding individuals with impaired vision, providing protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair, or fetching dropped items.)

Americans with Disabilities Act (Titles II and III)

•  Congress intended that public places take necessary steps to accommodation service animals and ensure that individuals do not get separated from their service animals.
• Only protects service animals in public places (not emotional support animals, and does not touch private residences)
• Access to public services, programs, activities, and accommodations of government or private entities.
• Entity must provide policies to allow a person with a service animal access to the goods and services offered by the entity
• Implemented and enforced by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)
• DOJ publishes a guide for businesses addressing practices regarding service animals, available at http://www.ada.gov/business.htm#Anchor-AD-11481.
• Cannot charge handler fees or surcharges to have service dog accompany them in public places.
• Public accommodation may ask an individual with a disability to remove a service animal from the premises if:
• The animal is not housebroken.
• The animal's presence or behavior fundamentally alters the nature of the gods or services that the public entity provides.
• The animal is out of control and the animal's handler does not take effective action to control it.
• The animal poses a direct threat to the health and safety of others that cannot be eliminated by reasonable modifications.
• Cannot require documentation that the animal has been certified or licensed as a service animal and the animal need not wear any special collar, harness, vest, emblem, or other means of identifying as such.