ORkestrel

The Department of Justice has established guidelines for service animals under ADA.

Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.

This definition does not affect or limit the broader definition of “assistance animal” under the Fair Housing Act or the broader definition of “service animal” under the Air Carrier Access Act. Under the ACAA you may still ask thectwo legal questions allowed under ADA. 1) Is the dog a service animal? 2) What Service has the dog been trained to provide? (If not obvious). Further, ACAA allows request for documentation if thecdog is an “emotional support animal” which is not a class of service dog under DOJ rules for ADA.

All that said it is easy to gin up documentation off the web for fake service or ES animals and this disingenuous behavior is actually encouraged by many otherwise legitimate organizations and individuals.

Bottom line is if enough of society accepts people wanting to do this, lying or not, it’s going to keep happening. $20 will buy you a service animal vest on eBay.