We all are and we’ll let you know when the decision comes in, I’m sure.
The interesting part on that case is the Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel ailment. In general allergies and fear of dogs are not valid reasons for denying access to people using service animals. As Crohn’s disease effects the GI tract it also applies under the ADA, when a typical case of hay-fever or other allergic reactions would not.
I feel for Goldman, because she is allergic even she comes into contact with people who have had contact with the dog (it is not allowed on the same floor).
But I would guess that this is the first time that two people with disabilities under the ADA with incompatible needs has been heard.
It will be interesting.
Wouldn’t fear of dogs fall under mental disorders that are protected under the ADA?
Temporary, short, non-chronic impairments with little or no residual effects usually do not qualify as disabilities under the ADA.
A person would have to show that it caused a substantial limit on a major life activity, in the case above Crohn’s disease would count substantial limit on a major life activity as it impacts a major bodily function (digestive and bowel).
Can you make a case that a fear of dogs would cause, chronic impairments which substantially limited major life activities?
(Note I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice)
[
](https://www.illinoislegalaid.org/legal-information/who-has-disability-under-ada)
Note how in this case the claim is that the allergies ended up “leaving her constipated for weeks”
Of course you can make a case for it. Are you saying a fear that is not related to dogs is legitimate but a fear of dogs isn’t?
What am I missing here?
Therapy animals don’t get to go anywhere they want. A handler takes a therapy animal to someplace–a variety of places.
An emotional support animal also doesn’t get to go anywhere its owner wants it to. This is about whether a person can keep such an animal where it would otherwise not be allowed, say a “No dogs” apartment. As far as I can tell, most pets are in fact emotional support animals, in that they make their owners feel better, but very few of them are documented as such. But a friend had her daughter’s dog documented as an emotional support animal because her apartment had a 50 pound weight limit for pets and the dog, a cocker spaniel, was getting ready to exceed it (which was a mistake in itself; it was too fat). This seemed silly to me, because I can’t imagine a landlord actually coming in and weighing a dog, but hey.
Only a service animal can go where animals aren’t generally allowed.
Does interacting with the dog limit your ability to have a bowel movement for weeks, does it cause you to lose the ability to walk for days etc…
In the context of the ADA “disability” is a legal term rather than a medical one.
The ADA defines a disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity.
If you developed a phobia in relation to wheelchairs or visual evidence of physical disability of others. But the phobia didn’t leaving a long term impact to your major life activities it wouldn’t be covered under the ADA.
Not everything that restricts your activities is considered an impairment under the ADA.
Sounds similar to someone who likes their dog lying on their chest when they experience “anxiety attacks.”
And yeah, when you all come in here and tell me how debilitating anxiety attacks can be, I’ll respond with the many times I’ve been having calm conversations with people who said, “Oh yeah, I’m having a panic attack right now.” :rolleyes:
Hillarity - sorry if I confuse the terminology between service/therapy/emotional support. I don’t see where the article linked describes the sorority dog as one or the other. My suspicion/impression is that folk who “rely” on supportive animals may blur the distinctions, placing the uncomfortable burden on people who prefer areas to be animal-free to question the legitimacy of a particular animal.
The laws covering this issue, both state and national, actually make a lot of sense. Service dogs that do an actual job and have actual training are in the most protected class, and must be accomodated the same way you’d accomodate a wheelchair or crutches. The only exceptions are if the animal poses an imminent physical threat or health threat to the establishment as a whole(one person being allergic doesn’t cut it). A good example of a non-legitimate service animal that someone had was a monkey that was known to carry deadly diseases. An armadillo would also not be legitimate because they carry leprosy.
Emotional support and therapy animals are less protected. I believe housing has to accomodate them, but public accomodations can exclude them. But as a general rule, accomodation should be assumed unless you have a good reason for exclusion.
No matter how much right a person has to bring a service animal into a public accomodation or have them in housing, they are responsible for all damages, and they can be booted if they are causing damages. In the case of the pot bellied pig, she should have been kicked out, not for having the pig, but for damaging the apartment.
My concern about therapy animals has been more along the lines of whether they help people to get better. Particularly when it comes to acute anxiety disorders, the most evidence-based approach appears to be graduated exposure, in which the sufferer is… Wait for it… Gradually exposed to the thing that makes him anxious, until he’s learned to tolerate anxiety.
I’ve heard of people getting therapy dogs to go out in public when they have really bad PTSD or something, but it seems to me that the animal is functioning as a safety behavior - something people do to alleviate anxiety in the short term while re-enforcing it in the long term. So an agoraphobic who struggled a little to go out in public gets a support animal. After so many times relying on that animal, he finds the idea of going without it intolerable. He needs that animal or he won’t leave the house at all.
That doesn’t look like recovery to me. It looks like the opposite. The anxiety disorder is now worse. The dog has become a behavioral mechanism that is part of the disorder. It’s no different than people who need to wash their hands or turn off lightswitches in order to feel okay about the world.
That’s my opinion, anyhow. I say this as someone who has… Finagled…the emotional support animal concept. In the complex where I live, you are only able to own one cat. This is an absolutely stupid rule considering the fact that I own my home and my cats are indoors, but anyway. I had one cat, and, not knowing the rule, got a kitten. The manager winkingly advised me to get a letter from my therapist, so I did. The letter is a bunch of vague stuff about how animals are good for mental health. No claims of disability or that I must have the animal, no discussion of my (many) mental health diagnoses, but the manager wanted to let me keep my kitten, so I did. I think you could make some argument that the kitten gave me something to nurture after the loss of my unborn child, but it’s not like I had a real and serious need for a second cat.
Do I think this concept is easy to abuse? After that experience, you betcha.
There are trained anxiety dogs, and they’re not cheap. The two things they can be trained to do are to signal when a person needs to take their meds and when they’re having an attack and need to deal with it. As odd as it sounds, some people lose the ability to perceive that they’re having an attack as the first stage of an attack. And if the next stages are losing the ability to judge social cues and interpreting anything said to them as an attack, they might need that notice.
Then it’s an actual service dog. The term emotional support or therapy animal, legally, applies to any animal that is not trained to perform specific tasks., but just makes the person feel better.
That’s the key to determining if an animal is a service animal. You can ask what tasks they are trained to perform for the person requesting accomodation.
Yep, this is n every day experience for those of us living with both the effects and the stigma in mental illness; but let me call mental health stigma what it really is: Discrimination
I have ADD, and general expect people to use it as a mark of shame, to diminish the effects and to claim it isn’t real. Trust me, I would be insanely happy if that was true.
To be clear, I am not attacking you about this, debasing mental illness or other medical conditions without externally visible indicators is an unfortunate and common societal norm.
What if I’m depressed and the only thing that will cheer me up is a stripper? They are pretty sanitary, clean up after themselves, and are pretty obedient when properly motivated.
I too suffer from sometimes debilitating mental illness, including various anxiety disorders, and adult ADHD, and I get that many people misunderstand, judge and make light of such things. But I do think a lot of people use ‘‘panic attack’’ inaccurately, lord knows I do. Panic attacks in the clinical sense include the following symptoms:
Palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate
Sweating
Trembling or shaking
Sensations of shortness of breath or smothering
Feelings of choking
Chest pain or discomfort
Nausea or abdominal distress
Feeling dizzy, unsteady, light-headed, or faint
Chills or heat sensations
Paresthesia (numbness or tingling sensations)
Derealization (feelings of unreality) or depersonalization (being detached from oneself)
Fear of losing control or “going crazy”
Fear of dying
I suspect a majority of those symptoms would halt a conversation or at least appear visible. People I know with panic disorder went to the ER the first few times they experienced a panic attack because they were certain they were about to die.
I once was diagnosed with Panic Disorder and I don’t think I ever had it. I have extreme anxiety that persists over a period of hours or even days, but panic attacks have a shorter lifespan and are more intense.
Dinsdale, maybe it would help to keep in mind that people use ‘‘panic attack’’ and ‘‘anxiety attack’’ colloquially, so this is not a good measuring stick for whether or not any given mental illness is truly debilitating. Severity varies across the board, obviously, but panic disorder, in particular, can be very, acutely intense.
Maybe I’m just easily amused today, but that’s pretty funny.
To take the question seriously though, your stripper is a human and so is allowed anywhere, with clothes on. If you’re claiming you need her to strip while in the store, then no, that probably won’t be allowed.
Oh, I dunno. One of the things about a service dog for the blind is that the dog is allowed to be anywhere the blind person is legally allowed to be (with the possible exception of prison, where you lose a lot of rights). So, you can take a Seeing-Eye dog into a commercial kitchen if you (the blind person) work there, but if you are a customer who barges in because you didn’t like your risotto, and want to complain, your dog doesn’t belong there, because, technically, you don’t.
Anyway, if you have a service stripper, you’d be allowed to take her (making an assumption there) anywhere you can legally be, even if, on her own, she isn’t supposed to be there.
Now, if she’s just an emotional support stripper, different rules. You can’t take an ESA absolutely anywhere you are allowed to be.
There are other exceptions for service dogs, even for the blind. It only applies to public accomodations, not workplaces. Workplace rules for service animals are different. In a workplace situation, you must request an accomodation. Then the workplace must grant the accomodation if it is reasonable. A service dog in an office is reasonable. A service dog in a kitchen would not be. A service dog would also not be reasonable in a warehouse where there is a lot of dangerous equipment.
I’ve never seen one work, I just know someone who researched getting one and then didn’t. If I remember correctly, the two tasks were: 1) place paw on owner’s thigh and stare at them until they acknowledge you and 2) keep paw on owner’s thigh and bark. Both work better if the owner is sitting and neither look like they’re doing anything but being a dog. So if the owner doesn’t explain, it doesn’t look like it qualifies.
That’s actually a pretty good idea. Emotional Support Strippers would pay for themselves and could double as designated drivers.