Legal scrutiny of support animals is rising but people aren’t misrepresenting an animal to gain an unfair advantage it is because the rental housing system leaves them no other choice.
By Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative
Across the United States, emotional support animals (ESAs) and service animals are receiving heightened legal attention — from federal guidance changes to new state-level laws.
Headlines often focus on misrepresentation, cracking down on abuse of ESA policies, and tightening rules for disability-related accommodations.
But at the Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative (PIHI), we see an important truth getting lost in this debate: Most people aren’t misrepresenting an animal to gain an unfair advantage. They’re doing it because the rental-housing system leaves them no other choice.
If more housing providers eliminated breed and size restrictions and stopped charging pet fees, many renters wouldn’t feel backed into a corner. The real solution isn’t deeper policing of ESAs — it’s removing the barriers that make misrepresentation feel like the only path to stable housing with a beloved pet.
Four recent developments illustrate why this conversation is more urgent than ever.
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HUD Rescinds Key Guidance on Assistance Animals, Creating Uncertainty for Renters with ESAs
HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) recently rescinded two major guidance documents:
- FHEO 2020-01: Assessing a Person’s Request to Have an Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation Under the FHA
- FHEO Notice 2013-01: Service Animals and Assistance Animals for People with Disabilities in Housing and HUD-Funded Programs
These documents — not the Fair Housing Act (FHA) itself — have long served as the practical roadmap for housing providers on how to handle reasonable accommodation requests for ESAs. They helped clarify:
- That ESAs cannot be subject to breed, weight, or size restrictions
- That landlords cannot charge additional pet fees, deposits, or “pet rent” for ESAs
- How to evaluate disability-related need and documentation
By withdrawing this guidance, HUD has removed the interpretive framework that ensured consistent application of ESA protections. While the core protections of the FHA still apply, the guardrails that shaped everyday decision-making are now gone.
This creates enormous uncertainty:
- Will landlords begin applying breed or size restrictions to ESAs?
- Will new fees be imposed?
- Will ESA-accommodation requests become harder to navigate and more inconsistently evaluated?
For renters who rely on ESAs — especially those whose animals fall outside typical apartment pet policies — the stakes are high. Without clear federal guidance, the risk of inconsistent or overly restrictive local practices grows.
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A Louisiana Federal Court Allows Landlords to Charge Pet Fees for ESAs — Signaling a Post–Loper Bright Shift
On July 16, 2025, the Eastern District of Louisiana issued a significant ruling in Henderson v. Five Properties LLC. The court held that:
- Landlords may impose a generally applicable pet fee on ESAs, as long as the fee applies uniformly to all animals.
- ESA owners must demonstrate that waiving the fee is necessary for their disability-related accommodation.
- Past HUD guidance barring fees for ESAs is not binding — a position amplified by the 2024 Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo limiting agency deference.
- Waivers remain available, but only when they clearly meet the FHA’s high standard for reasonable accommodations.
While this ruling currently applies only in Louisiana, its reasoning could spread quickly as other courts grapple with Loper Bright’s ripple effects.
The message is clear: ESA protections remain intact, but the threshold for securing certain accommodations may now be higher.
At PIHI, we’ve long argued that this fee-focused approach misses the bigger picture. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. households include an animal, making pets important family members. Policies that treat pet ownership as a privilege reserved for those who can pay premiums only deepen inequity. As courts reexamine the boundaries of disability accommodations, it becomes even more essential to build rental housing policies that don’t force people with pets into legal grey areas.
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Iowa’s and Wisconsin’s Focus on Service Animal Misrepresentation Reflect a Larger National Trend
A recent news story from Iowa highlights how cities are adjusting to a new state law increasing penalties for misrepresenting a service animal. These laws are often framed as necessary to protect people who rely on legitimate service animals — and that’s a real concern.
Now add to this: In Wisconsin, the State Assembly and Senate have both passed a bill that would impose a fine of $200 for falsely claiming a service animal and $500 for providing false documentation of an emotional support animal (ESA).
But there’s a deeper issue here that isn’t getting enough attention.
People rarely misrepresent an animal “just because.” More often, misrepresentation is a symptom of a restrictive housing landscape where:
- Breed, size, and weight restrictions bar families from most rental options
- Pet fees and deposits price people out of stable housing
- Some renters face losing not only their home, but also their companion animal
When renters feel trapped between housing instability and surrendering a family member, misrepresentation becomes, for some, the only perceived option. Penalizing the behavior without addressing the underlying causes is like treating a fever while ignoring the infection.
Pet-inclusive housing policies dramatically reduce incentives for misrepresentation. When housing providers welcome pets — without unnecessary fees or discriminatory restrictions — renters no longer need to navigate a confusing system or consider dishonest workarounds to stay housed with their companion animals.
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The ESA System Itself Reflects a Bigger Problem: Housing Policy Hasn’t Caught Up with Modern Pet Families
As recent scholarship highlights, the rise in ESA designations — and the backlash against them — stems from a deeper policy lag in how society treats companion animals. The legal framework for ESAs effectively medicalizes a common human–animal bond, forcing renters to obtain a mental health diagnosis simply to keep a pet in housing that otherwise bans or restricts them.
Research shows that housing barriers are a driver of ESA requests, with many renters pursuing documentation as a last resort when faced with breed restrictions, weight limits, or unaffordable pet fees. This creates a two-tiered system: People without a diagnosed disability are pushed to “medicalize” normal emotional-support needs, while people with legitimate service animals experience increased doubt and scrutiny fueled by concerns over “fake” ESAs.
The Bigger Picture: Misrepresentation Isn’t the Problem — Barriers Are
Across all four developments — federal uncertainty, shifting court interpretations, new state-level penalties (in Iowa and now likely in Wisconsin), and the deeper structural critique of the ESA system — one truth stands out: the system is tightening around ESAs and service animals without addressing why misrepresentation and accommodation disputes keep happening in the first place.
People aren’t seeking ESA letters to exploit a loophole. They’re doing it because the current housing landscape often forces them into a medical system that was never designed to regulate family life. Outdated policies — breed and size bans, high pet fees, and limited pet-inclusive housing options — push renters into pathways that pathologize the ordinary human-animal bond and increase scrutiny for those who rely on legitimate service animals.
At PIHI, our stance is simple: If pet-inclusive housing were the norm — with no breed or size restrictions and no punitive fees — the demand to misrepresent an animal would shrink dramatically.
Most renters want to follow the rules. But the rules themselves often make it nearly impossible to keep a pet, even when the animal is well-behaved, beloved, and essential to a family’s stability and well-being.
By reducing or eliminating unnecessary pet restrictions, housing providers can:
- Reduce fraud and misrepresentation
- Increase compliance with legitimate service and ESA accommodation processes
- Lower administrative burdens
- Improve resident satisfaction and stability
- Create healthier, more connected communities
Where We Go from Here
As legal scrutiny grows — from HUD’s withdrawn guidance to post-Loper Bright court rulings to state-level misrepresentation laws (including Iowa and Wisconsin) — one thing is clear: we cannot regulate our way out of misrepresentation if we don’t fix the root cause.
A housing ecosystem that welcomes pets is a housing ecosystem that:
- Supports mental and emotional well-being
- Reduces pressure on disability-accommodation pathways
- Ensures fairness and safety for residents who rely on trained service animals
- Promotes stability for families and the animals they consider part of that family
PIHI remains committed to advancing pet-inclusive housing solutions that eliminate the need for misrepresentation. The more we align housing policy with the lived reality of multispecies families, the fewer renters will feel forced into medical or legal grey areas just to keep their loved ones with them.
About the author:
The Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative was founded by Dr. Gary Michelson. He started Found Animals in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Found Animals established the first free microchip registry to help lost pets find their way home. With a commitment to continue keeping people and pets together, he turned to the next scalable solution: increasing the availability of truly pet-inclusive housing.
