Posts Tagged ‘service animals’

February 5 roundup

  • In November I wrote in Jurist on a Third Circuit panel’s refusal to order that sports great Jim Thorpe be disinterred and reburied under provisions of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA); in response, Elizabeth Varner, Diane Penneys Edelman and Leila Amineddoleh of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation argue that the panel could have based its result on specific language in the statute rather than via the roundabout path it did take [Jurist]
  • Electing judges, a relic of Jacksonianism, still generating problems today [John Steele Gordon, Commentary]
  • “Obama issues ‘executive orders by another name'” [USA Today on Presidential “memoranda”; earlier on executive orders]
  • “Legislators Say E-Cigarette Companies Are Bound by an Agreement Reached Before They Existed” [Jacob Sullum]
  • Woman upset at exclusion of service kangaroo but agrees to leave McDonald’s [AP, Wisconsin News, earlier (although local law may vary, federal government these days takes view that aside from qualified dogs and some miniature horses, ADA does not require businesses to accept customers’ service animals)]
  • Join the crowd: “Various plaintiffs v. various defendants,” an actual case caption [Lowering the Bar]
  • “..the very kind of odious racialization of politics that Congress wrote the Voting Rights Act to forbid” [Ilya Shapiro]

It’s an emotional-support alpaca, so let us in

Author Patricia Marx decided to brazen her way through New York restaurants, museums, high-end fashion shops, and other institutions with five “un-cuddly, non-nurturing animals” such as a turtle, snake, and turkey, and some therapist paperwork that was easy enough to procure. [New Yorker] Aside from writing hilariously, she’s well informed about the Americans with Disabilities Act interplay:

Why didn’t anybody do the sensible thing, and tell me and my turtle to get lost? The Americans with Disabilities Act allows you to ask someone with a service animal only two questions: Is the animal required because of a disability? What work or task has the animal been trained to perform? Specific questions about a person’s disability are off limits, and, as I mentioned, people are baffled by the distinction between service animals and emotional-support animals.

Len Kain, the editor-in-chief of dogfriendly.com, a Web site that features pet-travel tips, said, “The law is fuzzy. If you ask one too many questions, you’re in legal trouble for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and could face fines of up to a hundred thousand dollars. But, if you ask one too few questions, you’re probably not in trouble, and at worst will be given a slap on the wrist.”

We’ve been tracking the issue of real and imagined service animals for a long time.

P.S. As I should have noted, changes in federal rules a few years back attempted to lay out a bright-line rule that animals other than individually trained dogs and some miniature horses do not enjoy service animal status under the ADA. Unless merchants have reason to fear separate liability under differing state or municipal versions of discrimination law, they should therefore be on firm ground in rejecting alpacas, reptiles, or turkeys — which of course assumes they are up on the status of the federal regs. More: Scott Greenfield.

Disabled rights roundup

  • Blockbuster “web accessibility” issue, with potential for massive disruption of online life, continues to drag on without action in Washington despite urgings from academics; but at Ninth Circuit’s behest, California Supreme Court will decide whether state’s Disabled Persons Act covers websites [David Ettinger, Horwitz & Levy] More: Amy Alkon and commenters;
  • Federal district judge (E.D.N.Y.), suspecting foul play in multiple ADA filings, sends staff to investigate, but that’s a no-no as the Second Circuit reminds him [Josh Blackman]
  • Noting “continuing paranoia and obsession,” Vermont Supreme Court rebuffs bar applicant claiming discrimination on basis of mental illness [ABA Journal]
  • Just fine and dander: optician’s shop in suburban Detroit turns down worker’s request to bring service dog for generalized anxiety disorder, will pay $53,000 in settlement [EEOC]
  • Attack on “sheltered workshops” fits into multi-front effort to extend reach of federal wage-hour law: “Landmark DOJ settlement with RI provides road map to disability-law compliance for 49 other states” [ABA Journal]
  • Coalition politics counts: prominent disabled-rights groups [AAPD, DREDF, Bazelon Center, etc.] favor driving up cost of at-home attendants at expense of their own putative constituents [Benjamin Sachs, On Labor, on Harris v. Quinn amicus]
  • “Alcoholism and the ADA: Not as clear-cut as you think” [Dan Wisniewski, HR Morning, on Crosby v. F.W. Webb Co.] “Playing golf and having sex are major life activities under the ADA” [Eric B. Meyer]

March 13 roundup

  • Claimed prison guard punched him in face: “Man convicted in Chicago-area mass murder awarded $500,000” [WHAS, ABA Journal]
  • Ken White “immediately repulsed and enraged” by Mayer-Brown-repped suit seeking removal of Glendale, Calif. “comfort women” memorial [Popehat]
  • “Las Vegas: Man Sues Casino After $500k Loss ‘While Drunk'” [Sky News]
  • Regulators blame everyone but selves: “Drug Shortages Continue to Vex Doctors” [Sabrina Tavernese, NYT on GAO report, earlier here, here, etc., etc.]
  • Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli to speak tomorrow on “dereliction of duty” of AGs who decline to defend laws deemed unconstitutional, hope someone brings up this and this [more background; and his successor Mark Herring’s view]
  • Oregon: “Portland State University will pay $161,500 to settle a lawsuit claiming it discriminated against disabled students who have service animals.” [AP/KOIN] Laws make it dangerous for business owners to draw line between legitimate, fake service dogs [L.A. Times]
  • Not The Onion: Canada telecoms regulator pushes XX cable channels to run more Canadian content [CBC, National Post]

Service animal scams now “epidemic … across the country”

Marcie Davis, founder of International Assistance Dog Awareness Week, noted that ordinary pets passed off as service dogs — often with fake badges, vest, or papers bought off the internet — disrupt public places and eat food at restaurants, bring suspicion on genuine service dogs, and even on occasion get into fights with real service dogs like hers. Davis “said the fakers are also taking advantage of laws that limit the interaction a business owner can have with a disabled person. The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits requiring identification documents for a service animal and does not allow any questioning about specifics of a person’s disability.” [CBS Baltimore]

Discrimination law roundup

  • Litigious anti-feminist loses case alleging that Manhattan club’s expensive bottle service for old men, free drinks for young women violate bias law [NY Mag, NYDN]
  • “Hospital cannot ban all service animals from psych ward, federal judge rules” [ABA Journal] “New Yorkers use bogus ‘therapy dog’ tags to take Fido everywhere” [NY Post via Althouse]
  • Canada: foes seek to prevent opening of evangelical law school in B.C. [CBC, Jonathan Kay/National Post, Globe and Mail editorial, TaxProf]
  • Related: broad religious exemptions in anti-bias law make good complement to same-sex marriage [Ilya Shapiro/Cato, my take] Gay couples must also live and let live, or else liberty is in for some cake wrecks [Bart Hinkle, Richmond Times-Dispatch]
  • Hiring based on IQ testing: widely regarded as legally suspect, but mostly tolerated in practice? [Bryan Caplan]
  • “‘Borgata Babes’ lose weight bias suit; judge says casino policy was legal” [ABA Journal, earlier]
  • 2009 expansion of federal hate-crimes law headed for a court challenge? [Josh Gerstein, Politico]

Claim: depriving service dogs of graduation caps, gowns violated rights

Texas: “Two students say [their federally protected service-animal] rights were violated when the Denison Independent School District ordered them to remove the caps and gowns their service dogs were wearing for graduation…. ‘It’s not that he’s graduating, because he’s not; I’m aware of that,’ [Ms. Brashier] said.” [WFAA]

“Student Who Sued GVSU Over Campus Pet Rule Honored”

First the complaint, then the money, now the public accolade: as we noted last month, student Kendra Velzen filed a complaint — and got a $40,000 settlement — after administrators at Grand Valley State University in Michigan declined to allow her emotional-support guinea pig to live with her in the dorm, even though she had a doctor’s note for it. Now the “Fair Housing Center of West Michigan has given … Velzen its annual Outstanding Effort by an Individual award. The group says Velzen was honored for promoting ‘equal housing opportunity for university students throughout the country.'” The center has a previous connection with the case, having assisted Velzen in her complaint. [AP/WILX]

“University settles student’s lawsuit over emotional-support guinea pig for $40,000”

Kendra Velzen had a note from a doctor prescribing the companionship of the rodent, but Grand Valley State University outside Grand Rapids, Mich. nonetheless resisted her request to keep the guinea pig with her at class, in the dorm, and in food service areas. Now school administrators have folded. [Eric Owens, Daily Caller](& Greenfield)

“‘Donations’ to state agency let landlords avoid charges”

Between 2006 and 2011 the Iowa Civil Rights Commission engaged in a practice of filing housing discrimination charges against landlords, which it would then settle through “donations” that went directly to the commission rather than the state’s general fund, reports Jason Clayworth at the Des Moines Register. “The requests came after sting operations in which representatives of the commission would, for example, pose as prospective tenants and tell landlords over the phone that they needed a service dog for anxiety reasons and quiz them as to whether a pet deposit would apply to them.”