ADA and FHA Defense

The March 25, 2026 decision from the Connecticut Supreme Court in Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities v Mansions takes a small but significant step toward limiting misuse of the Fair Housing Act as a way to avoid pet deposits or “no pets” rules. For full disclosure purposes, I represented the winning landlord throughout the case.

To understand the decision, which was based on Connecticut law but should be persuasive in Fair Housing Act cases, requires a little background in how a person can be disabled and how that might affect their right to a reasonable accommodation like allowing an emotional support animal. Under both federal and Connecticut law a person can be “disabled” in three ways. First, they can really be disabled; that is, they have a mental or physical impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. Second, they can have a “record” of a disability. That would be something like a written medical record. It doesn’t matter if the record is correct, only that it exists and the landlord knows about it. Finally, they can be “regarded as” disabled even though they are really not disabled.

A tenant cannot be really disabled and regarded as disabled at the same time. The whole point of “regarded as” disability is that discrimination is wrong even if it is based on a wrong perception of a disability. It is just as bad to refuse to rent to a tenant because the landlord believes they are disabled as it is to refuse to rent because they are really disabled. And a person who is both really disabled and regarded as disabled doesn’t need a “regarded as” theory of liability because they already have the best theory of liability, a real disability.  At the same time, a tenant can prove they are regarded as disabled without having to prove they are really disabled.

“Record of” disability floats somewhere between these two. Connecticut law is not quite the same a federal law with respect to “record of” disability, but in principle under both state and federal law “record of” disability is like “regarded as” disability. A landlord should not be allowed to discriminate against a tenant because the tenant has an inaccurate record of being disabled any more than the landlord should discriminate against a person because the landlord has an inaccurate belief about the tenant.¹

Emotional support animals enter the discussion because under both federal and Connecticut law a person with a disability may be entitled to an accommodation – a waiver of some policy – it it is necessary for their equal use and enjoyment of an apartment, house, or other dwelling. But neither federal nor Connecticut law explicitly limits this theoretical entitlement to real disabilities. The bare words in both laws just says that if you are “disabled” you may be entitled to an accommodation.

With that, we can look at the Mansions case. The aggrieved parties were the Pizzoferratos. Ms. Pizzoferrato suffers from “anxiety” and believed her two shitzus helped with that anxiety. It was important to her and the lawsuit that she said she needed both dogs, not just one or the other.

[Why did I put “anxiety” in quotes? Because “anxiety” is a feeling or symptom caused by some underlying condition. You can be “anxious” about an upcoming test, or trip, or a relative’s health. That kind of anxiety is appropriate and not a disability. You can also be anxious because you suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which is a mental disorder in which the person feels anxiety when it is not appropriate or to a degree that is not appropriate. Suffering from Generalized Anxiety Disorder is a disability. Ms. Pizzoferrato was an anxious person, but the trial court did not find that she had the kind of anxiety that would be a disability.]

Mansions agreed to allow Ms. Pizzoferrato to have one dog despite its “no pets” policy, but refused to allow the second. There is no agreement among the various parties about who thought what and whether what they did was reasonable, but the trial court found that Mansions must have “regarded” Ms. Pizzoferrato as being disabled because it allowed one dog.  And for the trial court this was enough. Ms. Pizzoferrato met the first requirement for an accommodation because she had a “disability” under one of the three definitions of disability. She met the “needs an accommodation” requirement because she said, and the trial court believed, both dogs helped her anxiety. With this the trial court believed she had proved she was entitled to an accommodation allowing both dogs.

Mansions lost the trial and decided to appeal. In a long opinion the Court of Appeals basically followed this train of thought:

• Real disability is off the table because there was no finding of a real disability by the trial court.
• A person who is only “regarded as” having a disability is never entitled to an accommodation because they have no real disability that would create a need for an accommodation.
• Even though the trial court didn’t say it explicitly, the trial court implied found that Ms. Pizzoferrato also had a “record of” a disability.
• A person with a “record of” disability might need an accommodation, but that possibility didn’t matter in this case because
• There was no evidence at trial that Ms. Pizzoferrato really needed two dogs.  This conclusion was based on the legal definition of necessity used in various federal appeals court decisions. The Court of Appeals agreed with those decisions and said that under  that legal definition of necessity Ms. Pizzoferrato only “needed” the one dog Mansions allowed.

Thus, according to the Court of Appeals, even the implied finding that Ms. Pizzoferrato had a “record of” disability would not give Ms. Pizzoferrato a right to have two dogs as an accommodation. Based on this the judgment of the trial court was reversed.

Of course that was not the end of the story. The Connecticut Supreme Court is always available to decide whether the Court of Appeals made a mistake. In this case both sides thought that the Appellate Court had made mistakes. Both sides appealed to the Supreme Court and after a lot of briefing and a couple of hours of oral argument² we got the opinion this blog is about. The Supreme Court said:

• Everybody, including the Pizzoferrato’s and the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, agrees that Ms. Pizzoferrato did not need an accommodation if she was merely regarded as disabled. Supreme courts hate to commit to broad statements when a narrow statement will do, and the Court leaves open the possibility that under some circumstances a person with a “regarded as” disability might need an accommodation. But not Ms. Pizzoferrato.
• Because of this the Court of Appeals was right to reverse the trial court’s judgment. Hurray for my client. We win.
• But, says the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals had no business implying a finding by the trial court that Ms. Pizzoferrato also had a “record of” a disability. That implied finding was superfluous to the trial court’s result and appeals courts should not imply superfluous findings by trial courts.
• Similarly, because a “regarded as” disability would not support an accommodation for even one dog, the Court of Appeals’ discussion of what it means to “need” an accommodation and why Ms. Pizzoferrato didn’t “need” two dogs was also superfluous.
• We don’t want our legal precedents clogged up with unnecessary discussion and findings so the Court of Appeals’ superfluous findings  about “record of” disability and the definition of “need” are vacated.

Now from my viewpoint the fact that I won the case for my clients (who really won it for themselves by making the right decisions) is reason enough to shout from the rooftops, but is there any other reason to think this case was important? As it turns out there is. While the Supreme Court was unwilling to say more than the bare minimum needed to get to the right outcome, this opinion appears to be the first by any state or federal court that recognizes what should be obvious: you can’t need an accommodation if you are not really disabled.†  This matters to landlords because many will grant an accommodation request they don’t believe in just because it is easier and cheaper than fighting a HUD or state investigation. If it turns out the accommodation was far more trouble than they thought – as for example when the tenant decides that they are also entitled to take their 90 pound Rottweiler swimming in the pool off leash – the landlord can go back to basics and say the accommodation was never right in the first place because there was no disability. A court may say that by granting the accommodation the landlord “regarded” the tenant as disabled, but that won’t help the tenant because “regarded as” is not a ticket to keeping the dog at all, let alone in the swimming pool. A landlord can accept the bogus accommodation letter purchased on the internet without admitting the diagnosis is correct.

Also, even though the discussion of necessity by the Court of Appeals was vacated, I think later courts will look at the Court of Appeals’ discussion of “necessity” and find it persuasive. This ruling wasn’t vacated because it was wrong; it was only vacated because it was unnecessary. I think that other judges will be impressed by what the Court of Appeals said in a long and thoughtful opinion.

Where do we go from here? More than one kind of sloppy thinking about the FHA has contributed to the ESA problem faced by landlords. The cases on “necessity” relied on by the Court of Appeals did not concern animals, and a solid case explaining why emotional support animals should almost never be “necessary,” even for those who really are disabled, would be helpful. What is needed most, however, is for both the health care profession and the courts to give some hard thought to what an ESA must do to be a “necessary” accommodation. Does the ESA help a person with a disability overcome the limitations created by their disability so they can more equally use and enjoy their apartment in the same way a guide dog helps a blind person overcome the limits of blindness? Or is it just a furry narcotic that helps the owner not care about how their disability limits them?  Courts should reject the notion that an accommodation can be “needed” when it does nothing to improve equality of use and enjoyment of a dwelling.³ The purpose of both the Connecticut and federal fair housing statutes was to improve equality, not just make those disabilities feel better about inequality.

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¹ If it seems like this is needlessly complicated well, it is. The problem is that when defining “disability” (or “handicap” under federal law) the legislature was writing laws to prohibit employment discrimination as well as housing discrimination. In an employment context employers often get medical records that might show a prospective employee is disabled when they have never met the prospective employee. “Record of” disability was created to cover that situation. Of course if the employer or landlord discriminates based on the record they clearly also regard the employee/tenant as disabled, so it is somewhat redundant, but there is a long pre-FHA history to these definitions and so the state and federal legislatures were not really starting from scratch.

² If you are interested you can hear the argument at the Connecticut Supreme Court’s website, https://www.jud.ct.gov/supremecourt/Audio/OralArgumentsAudio.aspx. I have not listened to it myself because  I never sound as brilliant in the recordings as I remember I sounded at the time.

† To be perfectly accurate, a tenant almost certainly can’t need an accommodation if they are merely “regarded as” disabled. However, we are talking about emotional support animals, and the opinion, I think, excludes the possibility that a “regarded as” disability can support a need for an ESA.

³ A brief mention of “use and enjoyment.” The word “enjoy” here does not mean have fun or fell good. It means take advantage of what an apartment offers; shelter, heat, water and so forth. Lots of people who are not disabled don’t have fun or feel good in their home, but they still “enjoy” it as long as the roof doesn’t leak and the heat and water work.