Fair Housing Act no longer shields pit bull owners who claim mental illness
WASHINGTON D.C.––Pit bull owners with professed psychiatric issues, animal shelters used to rehoming pit bulls to the admittedly deranged, and animal advocacy organizations espousing “We can save them all!” are already going Kong toys over a newly narrowed definition of service animals allowed to live with disabled tenants in rental housing.
“The Donald Trump administration on Friday, May 22, 2026,” hours before the start of the three-day Memorial Day weekend, “in an internal memo obtained by The New York Times,” introduced a policy change “that could lead to thousands of animals and their owners being evicted,” revealed New York Times reporters Chris Cameron and Debra Kamin.
Stricter policing
Specifically, Cameron and Kamin continued, “The Department of Housing & Urban Development told leaders in its fair housing office that ‘effective immediately” the department would exclude emotional support animals and more strictly police the definition of a qualified service animal when granting accommodations for disabled tenants.”
This action particularly affects pit bull owners, who in recent years have increasingly often claimed their pit bulls are ’emotional support animals’ in order to evade breed-specific housing restrictions, often based on which dogs landlords’ insurance providers are willing to cover.
Insurance providers may not refuse to cover dogs recognized as service animals under the Department of Housing & Urban Development definitions in effect during the tenure of rental.
Second Trump administration reverses the first
Detailed Cameron and Kamin, “Many landlords enforce a no-pets policy, or may charge renters a deposit or monthly fee for pets. Under the Fair Housing Act, disabled tenants can ask to have those restrictions waived to accommodate their disabilities.
“In the first Trump administration,” Cameron and Kamin explained, the Department of Housing & Urban Development “issued guidance to landlords reinforcing that emotional support animals and other assistance animals were not considered pets, and were protected by the Fair Housing Act.
“Officials noted that emotional support animals provided “therapeutic emotional support” for people with disabilities.”
Airlines forced to carry “service” pit bulls
Indeed, other federal departments during the first Trump administration went even farther than that.
Elaine Lan Chao, U.S. Secretary of Transportation throughout the Donald Trump presidential administration, on November 30, 2020 introduced a revised Air Carrier Access Act regulation on the transportation of service animals by air which obliges airlines to accept pit bulls as service dogs until and unless a specific pit bull actually demonstrates dangerous behavior.
In practical terms, this means the pit bull must actively menace or even bite someone before the pit bull can be removed from a flight.
However, the revised Air Carrier Access Act regulation excludes “emotional support” animals from the “service animal” definition.
(See Trump administration obliges airlines to carry “service” pit bulls.)
Insurance, not immigration, is the issue
New York Times writers Cameron and Kamin linked the Department of Housing & Urban Development policy change to immigration issues, noting that “The housing department, under the leadership of [Trump appointee] Scott Turner, has moved aggressively to tighten rules and scrutinize public housing rolls, including by focusing on the immigration status of tenants.”
This linkage, however, is a rather improbable stretch, in view that the Department of Housing & Urban Development policy change applies to all U.S. rental housing, of which public housing constitutes only 2%.
Simpler, more direct explanation
A simpler, more direct explanation is the rapidly increasing number of six-and-seven-figure insurance payouts resulting from pit bull attacks.
During the six years that the previous Trump administration definition of emotional support animals as covered by the Fair Housing Act was in effect, the average insurance payout in a dog bite case, according to Insurance Information Institute data, nearly doubled, from circa $37,000 to $70,000.
Elected officials leaning both left and right have responded to this reality.
(See NY governor Hochul upholds higher renters insurance premiums for pit bulls.)
“Industry has emerged to convert pets into emotional support animals”
Continued Cameron and Kamin, “The memo to housing officials on assistance animals presented emotional support animals as a loophole to circumvent a landlord’s pet policies, asserting that ‘an entire industry has emerged to convert pets into emotional support animals.’
“The memo concluded that “while requests to waive pet policies for animals trained to perform specific disability related services are presumptively reasonable, requests to waive pet policies for untrained’ emotional support animals ‘are not.’”
Discovering the extent of the “entire industry ” that “has emerged to convert pets into emotional support animals” is as quick and easy as a doing an online search for providers of “ESA letters” asserting that the recipient has an emotional or psychiatric need to keep a dog.
In theory “ESA letters” are supposed to come from a physician, psychiatrist, or psychologist. In practice, there is no actual enforceable requirement for the author of an “ESA letter” to be verifiably any sort of mental health professional.
“Two questions” rule does not apply to the Fair Housing Act
Neither does an “ESA letter” have any more legal weight than a mail order “service dog” vest, but it is an often intimidating prop to landlords aware that the Americans with Disabilities Act allows a business managers facing someone who demands access to premises with a purported service dog to ask only two questions: “Is the dog required because of a disability?” and “What work or task has the dog been trained to do?”
Even if the answers are questionable, asking any further questions of a person who can establish a claim to possessing a legitimate service dog in court are a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The fines for alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act are $55,000 for the first offense and $100,000 for each additional offense. Falsely accusing a valid service dog can result in lawsuits as well. The dog owner can also sue the business for damages.
The Fair Housing Act is not as restrictive as the Americans with Disabilities Act, but the managers of rental premises often do not understand the difference, and do not risk making a mistake.
(See How the Americans with Disabilities Act has become the “Pit Bull Pushers Act”)
HUD definition
The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development [HUD] website “Helping Americans’ Assistance Animals” defines an “assistance animal” as an animal who “works, provides assistance, o r performs tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability, or provides emotional support that alleviates one or more identified effects of a person’s disability. An assistance animal is not a pet.”
Under the heading “Obligations of Housing Providers,” HUD explains that, “Individuals with a disability may request to keep an assistance animal as a reasonable accommodation to a housing provider’s pet restrictions.
“Housing providers cannot refuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services when such accommodations may be necessary to afford a person with a disability the equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.”
Evictions typically allowed only after an attack
A landlord may refuse to allow the presence of an assistance animal in rental housing only if the landlord is able to demonstrate several specific circumstances to the satisfaction of HUD.
Among these are two that in theory could allow landlords to exclude pit bulls and other dangerous dogs: that “The specific assistance animal in question would pose a direct threat to the health or safety of others despite any other reasonable accommodations that could eliminate or reduce the threat,” and/or “The request would result in significant physical damage to the property of others despite any other reasonable accommodations that could eliminate or reduce the physical damage.”
In practice, as with the Air Carrier Access Act, these provisions tend to allow eviction of a dangerous dog after the dog has already attacked someone or extensively damaged property, but not pre-emptively, as a reasonable precaution before dangerous and/or damaging acts have occurred.
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