A case for common sense?
[quote=“Saint_Cad, post:41, topic:1001500”]
Since this is IMHO, I think business deserve some protection from those that do not have legitimate ADA service animals. I think that counties should have to verify that the service dog is needed under ADA and issue a license for free that says effectively “This is a registered service dog.” that must be shown upon request. AND the county must go to the home to do this if the person with a disability is unable to travel.
So you want your county to create a service dog/animal verification officer, or add that duty to the existing animal control department (or whatever they call dogcatchers these days), and a registration and licensing system for the “ADA service animals”, and presumably have the county pass laws or implement regulations that specify if a service dog/animal is legitimate?
Is that unreasonable?
My answer is yes.
I mean, the employer can allow people to bring their pets in. Including unruly ones. It would only be limited if they legally had to accommodate someone else and the accommodation conflicted with the pets being there, or there was a health and safety hazard.
If someone wanted their emotional support dog, and the employer could accommodate it, why shouldn’t they? The employer can absolutely require the dog to be leashed and under control. If they don’t, that’s dumb, but it has little to do with the ADA and service dogs.
And have administrative appeals for license denials, and then judicial appeals of the administrative appeals. And some dogs performing needed services won’t pass, or won’t be approved at first due to errors in applications, or expired accreditation, or changing standards, or whatever, and then you’d have a person have to be without their service dog until it can be sorted out.
This is what happens now. The employee knows that he can’t do anything about the situation except ask the jerk two irrelevant questions.
This is what would happen except the manager can’t check the dog’s certification. The manager would also tell the jerk if he thinks that’s a problem in the future to come to the service desk and talk to someone there. Depending on how much of jerk he was the manager might ask him to leave the store, and possibly to never come back. The manager can ask a jerk to leave now, but he can’t ask the jerk who is in the store with their pet.
The current situation is what would happen if anyone could park in a handicap spot and if questioned why they parked there they only have say it’s because they’re handicapped, end of story.
I don’t understand why the ability determine the difference between a service dog and someone’s pet is such an imposition on anybody. A store owner can put up a sign that says “Only Service Animals Allowed” now. But they have no means of enforcing that.
It is what happens now. And it is exactly what will continue to happen even if there were a certification requirement.
And no, your second sentence is absolutely wrong. A nonhousebroken dog does not have to be accommodated now. A dog presenting a health and safety hazard can be refused entry or required to leave, now. The issue is that places of public accommodation don’t want to confront belligerent or disruptive people. So they don’t.
In my second scenario, I think 9/10 times, the jerk does not get asked to leave. The manager tries to de-escalate him without losing him as a customer. Meanwhile, the person with a disability and a qualified service dog has been bullied and harassed for no reason. She and her dog weren’t the problem.
Again, what problem is certification meant to solve?
There will always be jerks and managers/employees who won’t stand up to them.
That’s the point I was trying to make.
The person in the OPs office has an emotional support dog, IOW a nice sweet, comforting dog. Not a trained service dog.(Assuming the women isn’t blind)
I know this because there’s no way to certify a ESA is truly a trained dog.
You personally may have trained your dog or got lucky, like me, and an empathetic dog found you. But you cannot prove that. You can get a fake certificate. As I did, in an attempt to find out the certification was legit.
(That carries no weight.)
A trained guide dog for the blind, or trained service dog for other disability and their people have rights a nice, sweet pet dog does not. I’m sorry. It just doesn’t.
But who cares? If employers, businesses and entities aren’t able the assess which kind of animal it is. There’s no recourse. So it’s all essentially voluntary? Allow the dog or not? I guess the business owner has to make that choice.
No. It will not continue to happen because people who don’t respond civilly when asked to prove certification can be tossed out of the store. People who are civil when asked aren’t necessarily going to be asked to leave, but they’ll understand they might be and not try to pretend they have a certified service animal in the future.
A store owner doesn’t know if a dog is housebroken or not. They don’t if the dog will present a health and safety hazard to others. If they know a dog is certified there is not much chance of that happening. They also don’t have to be concerned in anyway about allowing a certified service dog on the premises before any actual problem occurs.
They do confront and refuse accommodation of any belligerent and disruptive people as long as that belligerent and disruptive person is not saying they’re being refused accommodation because they claim to have a service dog.
There’s been no mention of bullying or harassment here. Asking to see certification of a service animal would not be bullying or harassment.
Yeah because there is no way you could go to the Registrar-Recording office, hand them 2 pieces of paper and get your certificate. Or make the doctor and dog-trainer submit the information into a county database like they do with narcotics.
And that is beyond what would be required now since it assumes service dogs need to be trained by a trainer which is currently not required. As it now you could have it be as simple as the doctor issuing the certificate and registering it online with the county.
So what’s your cost/benefit analysis?
M y view is that there’s going to be an up-front cost of drafting the legislation, whether it’s an actual cost of hiring a lawyer to write the bill, or an opportunity cost of having staff do that work as opposed to something else useful. There’s going to be a training cost to make sure the service dog/animal verification officer knows how to fairly assess the request for a license. There’s going to be an ongoing cost of having the requests assessed and the licenses issued. And you can pretty much guarantee that someone who has their license application rejected is going to dispute the rejection, possibly via a lawsuit.
On the benefit side, the licensing requirement will stop people from taking their pet into a store or restaurant under false pretenses.
I agree with the idea that people shouldn’t be gaming the system to bring their pets into a place that forbids pets except when they’re truly necessary. But I question whether creating bureaucracy to deal with a minor problem is a good idea.
It is folding it in to the existing bureaucracy. In the grand scheme of life, this certification should not be overly complicated to get and we pay taxes so the government can do this. The same argument could have been used back in the past for why we shouldn’t issue drivers licenses or pilot licenses or register our cars or boats, etc or register to vote because the government would have to do something more than they do now.
And this is easier than any of that. Because it is a protected-class right, assessing the documents is basically, “Do I have any reason to think this is forged?” If not, here’s your certificate. And i even put out a possibility that all of the work is done by the doctor and the county is simply the digital record keeper. Or getting the certificate with your dog license. It really is not as difficult as some in this thread is making it out to be.
Is it minor? I would argue that beside people bringing animals where they are not allowed, the gaming of the system and the emotional support dogs has an adverse effect on people with disabilities using support animals since today everyone assumes people are gaming the system. Even in this thread we have heard of people being discriminated against for using support animals. And how much better would it be if when you are denied entry to a bus because “Guide dogs are never black.” (true story) you can simply hold up the certificate and obtain your rights under ADA.
Yes, it is. As a person with disabilities since adulthood, both visible and invisible, what seems so simple and easy can be rife with burdens and barriers for the person needing those accommodations. Financial, transportation, access to the requisite doctors, vets, trainers who are willing to provide the paperwork, being in a location with sufficient services and density to have the town or county infrastructure. The degree of difficulty for what you call “just get a certificate from the dr, trainer and give it to the licensing bureau” can be vastly more burdensome than someone without a disability has experienced. Trust me, I know, I’ve been doing it for 50 some years. Those words “just do” mean something quite different when you have disabilities.
One more burden can be the straw that broke the figurative back of the person with a disability and they just have to give up and stay home, isolated, with a lower quality of life and possibly a shortened lifespan, all because some other people won’t follow the rules. Or because facilities and managers don’t want to enforce the perfectly adequate rules that are already out there because it’s easier to shift that burden to the people who aren’t causing the problem and who historically have been disadvantaged and disempowered because they have disabilities, rather than tick off the entitled rule breaking customers who are the problem but are the source of income.
We are not the problem, don’t burden us with being the solution. Impose the burden on the people who are not following the rules and are the problem~the people bringing pets (emotional support animals) into places where they are not entitled to be.
A friend (who is blind and uses a service dog) just posted a story on his feed about his friend (also blind and with a service dog) who was kicked out of an Uber because the driver was afraid of dogs. The friend called the police, who promptly came and kicked her out of the Uber, siding with the driver, even though Colorado law and Uber policy says that the driver must take her and the service dog. She was even threatened with arrest.
After she was removed, denied another Uber because that driver was afraid of dogs as well, she eventually got where she was going. Later, one of the officers called her, and apologized because he had looked up the law and realized that she was correct and the police had completely messed up the situation, which obviously didn’t help much but maybe holds hope for the future. The officer promised to help educate his department on the laws around service animals. On her FB feed, many other people chimed in with similar bad experiences.
Having a system to certify service dogs would help, but not completely fix this situation. There’s a bit more of a systemic problem with the way our society treats disabled folks and their service animals. But poorly behaved pets masquerading as service animals is certainly part of the issue.
But that’s part of the problem - enforcing the rules when the animal is misbehaving is easy. You can ask someone to leave if the dog is not housebroken or not under the control of their handler. But let’s say I decide I don’t want to go anywhere without my well- behaved , housebroken , leashed pet. And for whatever reason , whether it’s because I’ve read this thread or because I’ve encountered ADA accommodations at work , I know that I can be asked only if the animal is required because of a disability and what task the animal performs. So I say the dog responds to seizures or detects low blood sugar. So how does the business owner enforce the rule ? They can’t.
I’m not going to say that procedures can’t end up being burdensome - of course they can. But they don’t have to be - it could simply be a matter of a letter from a doctor to whichever government agency licenses dogs , similar to the existing documentation required for emotional support animals .
The problem is that when certain disability accommodations are provided on someone’s say-so , it encourages people to lie. And if asking for documentation is not allowed, they will get away with it. Nobody is likely to lie about needing a sign language interpreter but if saying I’m disabled gets me to the front of the amusement park line, I’m incentivized to lie. Which is part of the reason why people with disabilities no longer go to the front of the line. They do get accommodations and may not have to physically stand in line but they will normally have to wait in a virtual line unlike the old days when they often didn’t have to wait at all. It wasn’t unheard of for people to rent wheelchairs or mobility scooters even if they weren’t actually needed.
Let me clarify what I meant. From the government administration side, then it is not as difficult as some are making out. And I think that it could be administered in a way to make it easier for the person with a disability such as sending in documentation rather than going to the county office.
Are you trying to make the service dog license an effective preventative measure or just a bit of red tape people have to go through - or around? Upthread, there have been comparisons between having a service dog license and having a disabled parking placard. I’m mostly ignorant about obtaining a disabled parking placard, but the bits I’ve heard indicate that the application is actually assessed to prevent fraud, and that it’s an effort to get one. There are costs, mainly in time, on both the applicant and the issuer. Society has accepted that those costs are required to make disabled parking effective. But those costs aren’t trivial. I’d bet that the accumulated cost amongst the 50 US states for managing disabled parking is over a billion a year.
What problem are you trying to solve? If there’s a wave of people who legitimately need service dogs being denied entrance into businesses because the doorkeepers presume that most people with dogs are lying about their service dog, then that would be an issue. However, this thread makes it out that the opposite is happening. For the most part, the liars are let inside, even if it’s obvious they don’t need the service animal. (And yes, I’m aware that the need may be non-obvious.) It’s annoying that some people choose to disobey rules and then lie to justify their disobedience. But is preventing that annoyance worth creating a substantial government cost, which would also affect the legitimate service dog users? I don’t think so.
Do you think that you personally are qualified to assess a disability application and verify medical documentation? I don’t think I am and I’d like to think that I’m not much stupider than a typical government bureaucrat. I’d expect the burden of proof to be similar to that for obtaining a disabled parking placard. Which, as I stated above, is non-trivial.
I feel terrible for the friend of your friend, but it’s important to know what it means for something to be illegal, or to have “a right” vis a vis how that is enforced.
I highly doubt that the Colorado law makes refusing to transport a service dog a crime. So calling the police might be helpful if they have the time and inclination to show up and tell the driver what the law is, but that’s it. They can’t force the driver to do it. There probably is a civil rights enforcement arm of the state, however, that will fine companies, sue on someone’s behalf, or provide some guidance on suing them. That’s how rights violations are typically enforced.
Trespassing is against the law though, and can be a criminal offense. If someone is violating your rights under the ADA, you can refuse to get out of their car in protest, but it becomes an act of civil disobedience if you continue after they tell you to leave. I’m sure that if the cops had known the law better, they could have handled it better, but ultimately the person refusing to leave someone else’s car is the only one doing a thing that can get them arrested.
First, they have actually enforced the rule. Only service dogs are allowed. They can verify that a dog is a service dog by asking two questions. They did so, and you lied in this example. So they verified, but they have to take your word for it if you give answers that qualify your dog as a service dog.
But even if you do that, what is the actual problem? What is the problem that certification is meant to solve?
No one on the side of wanting a certification system will answer this question. I’ll give it a try, and you all can tell me where I’m wrong.
Because no accommodation is required for misbehaving, out of control, or health and safety hazard dogs, they are not included in this.
As far as I can tell, there are maybe three notable harms caused by liars bringing in well-behaved dogs.
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Someone is getting away with something. I think this is the biggest trigger for non-disabled people. It makes people angry and they want to see the people get caught and get in trouble. Because if I’m following the rules, then you should have to too. But on a rational, not emotional, level, the effect of this part is, realistically, an infinitesimal amount of erosion of the rule of law, which is a fraction of a grain of sand in relation to the enormity of that erosion. And people who think they are observing this are usually making assumptions about how often this is happening based on the absence of a visible disability, and ignorance about what service animals can do. (Remember, this is about problems caused by the well-behaved dogs of people who will actively lie about them being service dogs.) An owner-trained mutt can be a fully qualified under the ADA service animal.
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The business accommodates an animal when it wasn’t legally required to. If it’s a well-behaved animal being handled responsibly, which doesn’t pose a health or safety hazard, I’m not sure what this harm actually is. Some businesses, like some hardware stores around here, and a lot of pet supply stores, allow dogs inside. And I’ve rarely seen a dog causing a problem, and when I have, it’s been dealt with immediately by the owner. Not all dogs are well-behaved, but, again, we’re not talking about those because they can be refused entry or kicked out.
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“Fake” service dogs harm people with disabilities because people assume they are all fake and then they don’t follow the legal requirements for service dogs. First, as I mentioned upthread, I’ve looked and I’ve been unable to find any call by disabled people who rely on service dogs for a certification system. So I have a very hard time with the idea that, on balance, those people would come out ahead. And really, this one is much more of a (general) you problem than a problem for the disabled community. I mean, it’s about making assumptions about who is disabled based on appearances, generalizing that, and then breaking the law based on those bigoted assumptions. I don’t really think the primary bad actor in this scenario is the liar with a well-behaved dog. (Though, yes, they are doing wrong as well – see #1)
What did I miss? What is the HUGE problem I’m overlooking?
Sorry for the wall of text. I tried to go back in and edit the numbered parts to collapse everything after the first line, but it took too long and I missed the edit window.
You miss one big thing. I think.
There are 1000s of people faking it.
Not just a few.
In my small area I see it every time I go in a store.
Or a restaurant. I don’t go in much. But surely they’re not showing up just because I did.
These are dogs of every size and degree of training. (Chinese restaurant, whining fuzzy dog in a stroller. Whined til owner gave it a bite… continuously for the whole time we were there. We didn’t complain, my daughter wanted to. Probably should have let her).
I don’t see how this doesn’t at least color the view of people seeing actual guide dogs. If you see the faked ones enough you’re gonna say “oh crap, we’re gonna have to smell, hear, step over… accommodate that dog the whole time we’re here”, even it’s an honest to goodness service animal.
I’m not going to say it’s a huge problem , because I’m not sure it is. But I disagree that the business owner is enforcing a “no animals except service animals” rule if he must allow my to stay with my pet . He’s trying to enforce the rule , but he’s not being successful. But more than that , there are other issues. Maybe you don’t care about people who are afraid of dogs. But suppose someone has a phobia or a serious allergy or a religious restriction prohibiting contact with dogs. I’m not thrilled about telling those people to suck it up but there isn’t always a satisfactory solution and most of the time it’s going to be the business owner/employee who has to suck it up. The person who has what they claim is a service dog is going to be allowed into the business ( whether it’s really a service dog or not) and if the front desk clerk is allergic to dogs , she’ll just have to deal with it or take a few days off ( most likely unpaid) Because no guidance I’ve ever seen gives any advice beyond “keep the service animal and the allergic person apart as much as possible.” It’s one thing for the allergic/phobic person to have to choose in the case of a real service animal and another for them to have to choose because I can lie and the owner must accept my lie. People with phobias and allergies are disabled, too.