A couple of district court decisions from late February should both comfort and warn ADA defendants. Gutierrez v. Chung, 2013 WL 655141 (E.D. Cal. 2013) reminds us that settlement alone doesn’t resolve an ADA violation. The only permanent solution is remediation. National Alliance for Accessibility, Inc. v. Millbank Hotel Partners, 2013 WL 653955 (D. Md. 2013), on the other hand, shows how to attack the boilerplate pleadings found in almost all ADA lawsuits. More
mental health disabilities
Beware of Dog – Mental Health Support Animals and the FHA
By richardhunt in ADA FHA General, ADA FHA Litigation General, Apartments, Condominiums, FHA, Multi-Family, Residential Development Tags: Apartments, Condominiums, developers, FHA Litigation, mental health disabilities, real-estate, service animals, support animals
Support animals for individuals with mental health disabilities present special problems for the owners and managers of residential properties. A complaint filed on New Year’s Eve, Intermountain Fair Housing Council, Inc. v. Michael’s Manor, LLC, illustrates some of those problems and shows why requests for an accomodation to allow a support animal must be handled with care.
The first issue faced by owners and managers is whether an untrained support animal has to be allowed at all. In Michael’s Manor the plaintiff alleges that the leasing agent flatly refused to permit a support animal for the treatment of a mental disability A decade ago that refusal might have worked, for a number of courts held that an apartment or condominium complex was only required to permit trained service animals based on the ADA definition of “service animal.” The FHA does not mention service or support animals in its provisions concerning reasonable accommodations and most recent decisions agree that refusal to allow a mental health support animal can constitute illegal discrimination. Requiring proof that the tenant’s animal qualifies as a “service animal” for a physical disability almost certainly violates the FHA. More