Service Animals and Federal Laws
My Experience with Assistance Animals Led Me to the Dog and Pony Show, Let Me See Pigs Fly and Monkeys Do Business: A Quick Survey of the Federal Law
By J. Aaron McCullough
[The following article featuring an overview of federal legislation with service animal provisions is excerpted from an e-bulletin issued by the DBTAC – Southwest ADA Center at the Independent Living Research Utilization program (ILRU). To read the entire piece, go to: My Experience with Assistance Animals Led Me to the Dog and Pony Show (www.dlrp.org/html/publications/ebulletins/legal/jan2001.html)]
While covering calls on the [ADA] hotline, I received a number of animal related inquiries. Generally, this required me to ask someone else to answer the caller’s questions. So [in order to be able to respond on my own], I began the research central to this e-bulletin.
Included here, a hopefully helpful, short glossary detailing the different categories of animals that assist individuals with disabilities:
Dog Guide or Seeing Eye® Dog is a carefully trained dog that serves as a travel tool for persons with severe visual impairments or who are blind. There is a trend to train miniature horses for this assistance task because of their long life span (20+ years in some cases), [but this effort is not without controversy].
Hearing or Signal Dog is a dog who has been trained to alert a person with significant hearing loss or who is deaf when a sound, e.g., knocks on the door, occurs.
Service Dog/Animal is a dog, or other animal, that has been trained to perform specific tasks and assist a person who has a mobility or health impairment. Types of duties the dog may perform include carrying, fetching, opening doors, ringing doorbells, activating elevator buttons, steadying a person while walking, helping a person up after the person falls, etc. Service animals are sometimes generically called assistance animals. Recently, Capuchin monkeys and miniature pot-bellied pigs have been trained to fulfill a variety of highly skilled service animal tasks.
Seizure Response Dog is a dog trained to assist a person with a seizure disorder. How the dog serves the person depends on the person’s needs. The dog may stand guard over the person during a seizure, or the dog may go for help. A few dogs have somehow learned to predict a seizure and warn the person in advance.
Therapy Animals are not legally defined by federal law, but some states have laws defining therapy animals. These animals provide people with therapeutic contact, but are not limited to working with people who have disabilities. They are usually the personal pets of their handlers (who may be therapists, physicians, rehabilitation professionals) and work with their handlers to provide services to others. Federal laws have no provisions for people to be accompanied by therapy animals in places of public accommodation that have “no pets” policies. Therapy animals usually are not service animals.
Companion/Emotional Support Animals assist people with mental or emotional disabilities who use the assistance of this type of animal to function independently. This type of assistance animal has the most tenuous legal status, and as a concept it is hard, if not impossible, to differentiate them from the role of pet.
Transportation and Travel
Air Travel
A recent incident this past November brought the issue of assistance animals and transportation to the nation’s attention. A US Airways passenger requested that her Vietnamese pot-bellied pig accompany her in first class on a cross country flight. The passenger claimed that she had a heart condition so severe that she needed the pig’s company to reduce her stress. The pig was given a seat in first class free of charge. The airline complained to the FAA that the pig acted wild, milled around the galley begging food, and tried to enter the cockpit. FAA spokesman Jim Peters claims that the airline acted properly in boarding the animal as part of “...a legitimate request to transport a qualified individual with a disability and her service animal.” Evidencing a less than satisfied attitude with the FAA’s findings, US Airways spokesman Dave Castelvetter claims that although they consider this particular matter closed, US Airways is setting in place new measures that will avoid a recurrence of what the carrier views as an abuse of the law.
So what is the law here? The Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 [not the Americans with Disabilities Act] specifically addresses service animals [and air travel]. It provides that air carriers will accept an animal as a service animal with any credible written documentation, presence of harnesses, or credible verbal assurances of the qualified person with a disability. The carrier shall further permit the service animal to accompany the person with a disability in their seat unless such blocks an emergency exit. It further requires the airline to reassign the individual with a disability to another seat if that is necessary to facilitate the presence of the service animal. The US Department of Transportation provides additional guidance on accessibility and air travel on their website.
We Did Planes & What About Trains and Automobiles?
The ADA has force where assistance animals travel overland. The ADA defines service animals as “...any dog guide, signal dog, or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including but not limited to guiding individuals with impaired vision, alerting individuals with impaired hearing to intruders or sounds, providing minimal protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair, or fetching dropped items.” The ADA essentially requires that the person be disabled to be covered, and that the animal have some particular training.
Additionally, the ADA provides (with regard to buses, taxis, trains and other forms of conveyance and supporting facilities such as depots, train and airport terminals), that no entity shall discriminate against an individual with a disability in connection with the provision of transportation service. Included in the ADA regulations is the right of a person traveling with a service animal to have equal access to public transportation accommodations. Public and private entities providing public transportation and shall permit service animals to accompany individuals with disabilities in vehicles and facilities.
Public Accommodations
Lodging & Other Places of Public Accommodations
Hotels and motels clearly are anticipated arenas for the protection of the ADA, as are all places of public accommodation. These temporary lodging facilities are required to allow individuals with disabilities to use their facilities with their service animals and to modify any policy or practice in place that prohibits the presence of pets on their premises. The US Department of Justice has stated that, “[generally, a public accommodation shall modify policies, practices, and procedures to permit the use of a service animal by an individual with a disability.” It is intended that the broadest feasible access be provided to service animals in all places of public accommodation, including movie theaters, restaurants, hotels, retail stores, hospitals, and nursing homes. The section also acknowledges, however, that, in rare circumstances, accommodation of service animals may not be required because a fundamental alteration would result in the nature of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations offered or provided, or the safe operation of the public accommodation would be jeopardized.
Housing
The most important federal law impacting housing and service animals is the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988. The Act’s prohibition against discrimination in housing has great impact where it involves the issue of service animals for the disabled. The Act may be used to prohibit a person from refusing to sell or rent to a person who needs a companion animal in his or her home for reasons of mental or physical health. A landlord is required to make “reasonable accommodations” in rules, policies, practices, or services when such accommodations may be necessary to afford a disabled person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.
The provision prohibiting discrimination against persons with disabilities may give broader rights for tenants to live with companion animals than may be readily apparent. The law is applied to the person renting the unit and any persons legally living in the dwelling or intending to live in the dwelling after it is rented. The FHA applies to nearly all housing, whether the dwelling is for sale or rent.
Employment: Toiling with Your Beast of Burden
The general assumption is, from everyone I have spoken with and every website I’ve reviewed, that individuals with disabilities are allowed under Title I of the ADA to use your service dog in the workplace. However, this issue is not specifically addressed in the law. Under Title I, discrimination includes failing to make reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual who is an applicant or employee unless such covered entity can demonstrate that accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operations of the business of such covered entity.
Source: DBTAC – Southwest ADA Center
