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The Trump Administration strikes another blow to the animals and their humans who depend on them, this time targeting emotional support animals. On May 22, 2026, the Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (“FHEO”) signed an internal memorandum that permanently rescinded the Housing and Urban Development’s (“HUD”) prior protections for emotional support animals (“ESA”); this is effective immediately. What does this mean? Essentially, landlords are no longer legally required to accommodate untrained emotional support animals!
Historically, the American with Disability Act (“ADA”) solely permitted service animals, rather than ESAs, to accompany handlers into public spaces and private spaces where the public is allowed. However, under the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”), landlords were legally required to make accommodations for both service animals and ESAs. This meant that even if an apartment had a “no pet policy” landlords were legally required under the FHA to accommodate the person with the ESA. ESAs will no longer receive these protections, notably because the prior policy was “unclear.” Rather than work to clarify the previous ESA policy, the administration cruelly chose to permanently rescind the protections.
Now, the memo states ESAs must be trained in accordance with “training component of the ADA’s definition for service animals to assess animal-related reasonable accommodation complaints under the Fair Housing Act.”
We are completely appalled that the administration would strip away protections for people that need ESAs, such as people who struggle with anxiety disorders or depression, such as veterans with PTSD. Additionally, we are concerned that this new policy will exacerbate the pet overpopulation crisis.
With so many housing restrictions on pet ownership, this policy will further impede people from being able to find housing that is pet friendly. As a result, it is likely that:
(1) people will be further dissuaded from adopting animals and (2) have no other option but to surrender their beloved pets to shelters to find housing.
In California alone, hundreds of thousands of animals are euthanized in shelters every year. The new policy will almost certainly increase this number.
Although the policy created by the internal memo is already in effect, the HUD “intends to engage in notice and comment rulemaking regarding animal-related reasonable accommodations, with the aim of harmonizing [its] regulations, to the maximum extent possible, with those of the ADA.”
Therefore, there will be an opportunity for animal advocates to utilize public comment and share our concerns. We will send an alert as soon as we find out the next steps.
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