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You're listening to the Disability Law Lowdown Podcast, show number 49, with your host, Jacquie Brennan.

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Hi! This is the second part of our service animal series. In this podcastcast, we're going to talk about the Fair Housing Act as it relates to service animals.

The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968. The purpose of it was to provide protection from discrimination in housing. But at that time it was based on race, color, national origin, and later gender was added. And in 1988 it was ammended to expand protection from housing discrimination to other classes, including disability and familial status. So of course for today we're really talking about the disability part of that law.

So what is prohibited by the Fair Housing Act in terms of disability? Well, landlords, condominium associations and other housing providers are prohibited from discriminating against housing applicants or residents because of their disability, or because of the disability if anyone associated with them. As well as from treating persons with disabilities less favorably than others because of their disability. The Fair Housing Act also mandates that housing providers make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services when necessary so that a person with a disability has the equal opportunity to enjoy and use the housing.

So that's the key provision when we're talking about animals. Remember the definition of a service animal under the ADA, which is that any guide dog, single 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 who have impaired vision, alerting individuals with impaired hearing to intruders or sounds, providing minimal protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair or fetching dropped items. And if you listened to the first podcast in this series, then you might remember that there are new proposed regs and those proposed regs, when they're finally adopted, will change the definition of service animal a little bit and a few more tasks such as assisting an individual during a seizure, retrieving medicine or the telephone, providing physical support to assist with balance and stability to individuals who have mobility disabilities, and assisting individuals, including those with cognitive disabilities, with navigation. It will also have a definition for psychiatric service animals that recognizes that they can be trained to perform a variety of tasks for individuals with disabilities, including detecting the onset of psychiatric episodes or ameliorating their effects. Other examples of tasks that might be performed by psychiatric service animals include reminding a person to take medications, turning on lights, or performing safety checks for persons with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, interrupting self-mutilation for individuals who have Dissociative Identity Disorders and keeping disoriented persons from danger.

So the same definition is used for the Fair Housing Act, but the ADA, of course, does not provide coverage for therapy animals, comfort animals, emotional support animals or even pets. But, the Fair Housing Act might provide coverage for those kinds of animals, as well. Therapy animals are used as part of medical treatment plans to provide companionship, to relieve loneliness and sometimes help with depression and certain phobias. They are not service animals because they do not do work or perform tasks that assist people with disabilities. But under the Fair Housing Act, those kinds of comfort animals or therapy animals might be allowed in housing, even if there's a "no pets" policy in place. So under the Fair Housing Act, service animals must be allowed, and comfort or therapy animals may be allowed, even if there's a "no pets" policy in place. And this is because it would be a reasonable accommodation for a person with a disability to have the comfort animal or the therapy animal with them. And under the Fair Housing Act, reasonable accommodations are required to be made for people with disabilities. The Fair Housing Act definition of housing discrimination includes the refusal to grant, and I'm quoting here,"reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services when such accommodations may be necessary to afford such person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling."

So if a person needs a therapy animal or comfort animal, the person with a disability should request a waiver to the "no pets" rule. The waiver to the "no pets" rule in order to allow a person with a disability to have either the assistance of a service animal or a comfort animal, emotional support animal, therapy animal, that waiver constitutes a reasonable accommodation. And courts have found that landlords must use what they call a flexible standard based on the needs of a particular tenant when responding to a request for a reasonable accommodation.

So that about covers service animals and therapy animals under the Fair Housing Act. Be sure to tune in for the next part of this three part series, where we're going to discuss service animals under the Air Carrier Access Act.

The Disability Law Lowdown is brought to you by the Disability Business Technical Assistance Centers, which are a network of ADA centers that provide training, technical assistance and materials on the ADA and other disability related laws. Funding for the Centers is provided by a grant from NIDRR, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. You can subscribe to the Disability Law Lowdown at our website at disabilitylawlowdown.com or on iTunes.



The Southwest and Rocky Mountain ADA Centers are part of a program of Independent Living Research Utilization at TIRR - Memorial Hermann in Houston, Texas, and is funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. If you have questions about disability law or would like to request materials or training, please call 1-800-949-4232. This podcast is protected by the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivative-Works 2.5 License. For more information and transcripts, visit www.ada-podcast.com.