The Americans with Disabilities Act could not be clearer about the difference between SDs and ESAs. “Service animals are working animals, not pets,” the Department of Justice states. “The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability. Dogs whose sole function is to provide comfort or emotional support do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.” While businesses may not inquire into a person’s specific disability, they can legally ask if the dog is a service dog and what job the dog performs. And if the person answers something like “comfort” or “emotional support,” he or she is done. The business is obligated, for the safety of the public, the pet, and service dog teams, not to allow that person to bring their dog in with them. The St. Louis Zoo recently did an excellent job of enforcing the law, refusing to permit a woman with her emotional support dog to enter the zoo with it. Unfortunately, news stories misidentified the dog as a SD, despite the woman answering the two questions by denying the dog was a service dog, and stating that its purpose was to provide emotional support. Can’t get much clearer than that!
I do not take the job emotional support animals do lightly. Put simply, they are a crucial way to keep many people with psychiatric disabilities from taking their own lives. That is not a trivial job. It is crucial that people in need of ESAs are able to keep them, regardless of where they live. People without disabilities who buy fake ESA registration or certification—just as fake and just as useless as SD registration and certification—are endangering that right, and I find their actions reprehensible. But ESAs are, most emphatically, not comparable to service dogs when it comes to public access. They just cannot meet the behavioral standards required of a service dog in public.
These differences cannot be overstated—especially in the case of psychiatric service dogs and ESAs. Many people use these terms interchangeably, and this does a huge disservice to handlers of psychiatric service dogs. Any handler who identifies their dog as a “psych dog,” for example, is forced to jump through extra hoops during air travel. The Air Carrier Access Act, which dictates the rights of disabled people in air travel, treats psychiatric service dogs the same as untrained ESAs, which, frankly, is unacceptably discriminatory. Those who identify their dogs as psychiatric SDs must provide a letter, less than one year old, written by a mental health professional stating that their dog is necessary because of a disability. Owners of ESAs are required to produce the same letter. Meanwhile, every other kind of service dog handler can go through security and board in the same manner as non-disabled travelers. Is it any wonder handlers are reluctant to “out” their SDs as psych dogs? This is just one added layer of stigma, highly unhelpful to those dealing with a psychiatric disability.
Psychiatric SDs are just like any other service dogs. Their handlers are disabled, only that disability is often invisible to the general public. Psychiatric SDs are required to conform to the same high behavioral standards as other SDs, and that includes, most emphatically, doing work or tasks to mitigate the handler’s disability. These tasks can run the gamut, from performing deep pressure therapy to leading a handler to an exit or quiet place to sit when they dissociate. ESAs are not trained to behave in public or to do tasks, and as such, are not even remotely comparable to psychiatric service dogs.
Insisting on the distinctions between service dogs and ESAs is not some nitpicky exercise in semantics. Knowing the difference and enforcing the appropriate regulations regarding each type of animal is crucial to keeping service dog teams, and the public, safe.
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