When federal officials clarified what qualifies as a service animal, they were looking to cut down on people exploiting the law. Now, a girl with autism may be an unintended casualty.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice issued new regulations outlining what does and does not qualify as a service animal. Under the changes, animals that merely provide comfort don’t qualify for protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Now, officials at the George West Independent School District in Texas are using the new rules to prohibit Colleen Molohon, 17, from bringing her Australian cattle dog, Chili, to school, the girl’s mother says.
Molohon was accompanied by Chili starting in the ninth grade. But at the beginning of last school year the district determined that under the new Justice Department rules the dog was a “comfort animal” and officials said Molohon could no longer bring Chili to class with her.
This week, school officials stood by their decision and said the dog would not be allowed for Molohon’s senior year.
Molohon’s mother insists that Chili qualifies as a service animal and is filing a federal civil rights complaint, reports the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times. To read more click here.
I can’tunderstand what ‘problem’ they are trying to ‘fix’. What’s the big deal with people taking advantage of the law? How does that impact on others? This whole thing sounds like people without disabilities thinking that p/w/d are just liars, trying to put something over on them!
My son has a service dog and we unfortunately live in Texas. We were denied for his service dog to come to school and it was not just for comfort. We had a private attorney and a federally funded attorney. We went as far as mediation through the state. Both attorney’s recommended we move out of the state. THere is a reason they are 49th in the nation for assistance with special needs. Hopefully this child will get to keep her dog with her in the end.
As a property manager I do see a problem with “people taking advantage” of the law as it was previously. Now that it is clearly defines a “Service Dog” it reduces those “claiming” to need a dog that provides emotional support versus actually providing a service. The legal can do’s and cannot do’s are nightmare in every way. For example, landlords cannot require a Pet Deposit, because an actual “Service Dog” is not a pet, so yes for many more reasons “taking advantage”of the law is a problem.
However in this girl’s case the history for need for support has been there previously, but I believe it would be safe to say that if they make an exception for one the would need to do the same for others in the same situation. I see both sides on this one and only hope that the law its self can be modified to be more reasonable for all parties involved.
“Exploiting” was an understandable but imprecise term for the lead. I’d suggest something like “abusing” to make it absolutely clear that people were using the law to secure benefits for which they didn’t qualify.
Problem is that some folks *did* claim that their preferred pet was a service animal in order to bypass pet restrictions. Ms. Davis’ concern is legitimate, though–since I’m not a property manager and don’t have her background–I’m inclined to support pet people. (If my livelihood depended on keeping buildings in good order, I’d probably be a bit stricter on non-humans living in the building too!)
One problem I have with the new regs is the restriction on non-dog service animals. I find dogs more trouble than they’re worth and would be far better supported by a cat. Some folks work well with reptiles such as iguanas or snakes. If the animal is in fact trained (to include “not damaging the residence”) and a qualified therapy-provider, I have a difficult time discriminating by species.
In response to KA101, the new restrictions under the ADA wouldn’t affect one to use other species as ESAs, just as service animals. There are no legitimate uses for reptiles in that field as they cannot be trained to do tasks reliably on command (nor to do tasks that are more than just emotional support). As for cats, I’ve yet to see one that could pass a PAT test or perform reliably in crowded situations.
Problem with relying on “emotional support” animals is that they aren’t mentioned in the ADA regs, and as such their access rights are rather curtailed.
The PAT test, though certainly looking like a good standard, doesn’t seem legally-required for a given animal to qualify as a “service” animal. So asking non-dogs to pass this test written specifically for dogs may be a case of testing for the wrong qualities…or even failure to reasonably accommodate different species.
I mentioned the test to a fellow spectrumite who is active animal rescue and trains xyr own service animals. Xe pointed out that some PAT criteria might be counterproductive for cats, given their smaller size. In any event, xe had had some success with a cat named Cricket, who as a function of xyr upbringing (medical needs since kittenhood, so lots of travel & exposure to strangers throughout early development) ended up functioning reasonably well in a support role throughout international travel. Unfortunately, Cricket’s health problems ended up cutting his career short, but he’s one example of a cat who was performing service tasks.
(For autistics, alerting us to obstacles and people–possibly facilitating interactions–in the vicinity can be a legitimate task. I’ve known auties who will go straight through the mud puddle because they didn’t notice it in time to process a way around.)
Comfort or therapeutic animals have never met the definition of service animal in the ADA. There are some folks who got lucky and had their comfort dogs accepted in places of public accommodation but it has never been law to regard them as service animals.
Lori – TX is violating the law. Contact the US Dept of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to file a complaint. They are very effective because the school will lose its federal funding if they do this to a disabled student. Funding is sent quarterly so your complaint will be resolved quickly.
The tragedy here is that it is clear that the school officials have no idea what autism is or how it is best handled so children with autism can be better included into the regular school community. Hopefully, that child was taught by some teachers who educated themselves on autism since she was going to be in their classes. Otherwise, that child had a much more difficult time in school than was necessary.
You daughters dog does meet the new requirements under the updated law. There is a description of what is condsidered work or task and the line is a dog that interupts or prevents disruptive behavior from an individual that has (B) Any mental or psychological disorder such as mental retardation, organic brain syndrome, emotional or mental illness, and specific learning disabilities.
(ii) The phrase physical or mental impairment includes, but is not limited to, such contagious and noncontagious diseases and conditions as orthopedic, visual, speech and hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental retardation, emotional illness, specific learning disabilities, HIV disease (whether symptomatic or asymptomatic), tuberculosis, drug addiction, and alcoholism. I use this line alot for my cases and clients
The problem here isn’t the child’s disability, it’s the fact that the dog is not specifically task trained to perform a task, directly related to her disability, that she cannot perform herself. Comfort is NOT a trainable task since it’s something that animals do naturally – no training needed. Animals that provide comfort only are called Emotional Support Animals. They are NOT task trained or really trained in any way so there are very good reasons not to allow unlimited public access.
Service dogs go through years of training so that they perform a mitigating task AND are strictly obedience trained, socialized around pets, people and other animals, exposed to numerous environments so not to be frightened or startled by the unfamiliar, potty trained, trained to remain calm and to lie quietly. ESA’s don’t need any specialized training.
It’s unfortunate this mother is upset that the law finally caught up with her and that school exercised their legal right to exclude what was a fake service dog. She’s lucky , having a dog you are parading as a service dog is federal fraud, punishable by high fines, jail and confiscation of the animal.
I’m entirely in favor of this. Badly or untrained ESA’s and pets parading as service dogs make a bad name for those of us with legitimate service dogs.