Emotional Support Animal (ESA): Complete Expert’s Guide

However, animals have been serving the human race long before the Pandemic. Whether we talk about hustling millennials, young children, adults in their mid-years, or lonely senior citizens, assistance animals have proven beneficial for all.

Over the years, acknowledging their significance, they were referred to as Emotional Support Animals.

If you do not know about emotional support animals and their difference from pets, keep reading this article.

What are the benefits of Emotional Support Animals?

As already mentioned, Emotional Support Animals are very beneficial for individuals with emotional or psychiatric disabilities. Considering this, the alleviation of overall emotional or psychiatric disabilities is because of the comfort, love, companionship, and support they offer, which makes them a perfect emotional support animal.

Some of the benefits of emotional support animals are;

• Promising Company: When you are lonely or feel alone even after being surrounded by people, an ESA can be your promising friend who will always be there for you. You can easily overcome the feeling of loneliness with an ESA by your side.
• Evoke Responsibility trait: It is a known fact that keeping a pet in the house, taking care of it, preparing meals for it, bathing it, etc., makes you more responsible and accountable; the same is in the case of having an ESA.
• Physical Health: When you have an ESA in your house, taking it for walks or playing with it will naturally level up your physical activity. The rise in physical activity will indirectly improve your heart health, balance cholesterol levels, etc.
• Give and Take Relationship: The love and care you give to your Emotional Support animals, they will provide to you a lot more than that. Your ESA will love you the most and want nothing but your happiness back.
• Curb Anxiety: Whether it is social anxiety or anxiety that comes up with OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) or any other type of anxiety, petting an ESA can alleviate anxious feelings and make you feel calm, relaxed, and loved.
• Heal from depression: When depression can make it impossible to leave your bed, being surrounded by your emotional support animal will give you courage in these challenging times and support you to heal quickly.
• Overcome Trauma: Many people have cured their years of trauma by petting an emotional support animal. Childhood Traumas due to sudden incidents or years of abuse are most challenging to overcome, but an ESA can help you with this too.
• Other mental disorders: Along with Anxiety, stress, trauma, and depression, an emotional support animal can also alleviate symptoms of mental health disorders like Phobias, Panic attacks, Eating disorders, etc.

What is the difference between an Emotional Support Animal and a Service Animal?

Emotional Support Animals and Service animals indeed have some similarities, but their roles are both different at the core.

Talking about Service animals, these are the animals specially trained to assist their disabled owner in performing daily activities. Here, the disabilities could be physical, intellectual, sensory, psychiatric, or mental. Now the assistance in daily activities could be;

1. Help in crossing the street
2. Guiding the owner in the crowd
3. Reminding the owner to take medications
4. Bringing items like newspapers, towels, water bottles, etc.
5. Alerting the owner in case of danger
6. and lots more.

Unlike Emotional Support Animals, all animals cannot qualify as service animals; only dogs and miniature horses are considered service animals.

Psychiatric service dogs (PSDs) are the service animals solely used to treat Psychiatric disabilities in disabled individuals. PSDs are different from emotional support animals in the fact that they are trained. You can self-train or get your dog trained by some professional to make it your PSD.

What are the laws around emotional support animals?

As per the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), housing authorities are obliged to allow emotional support animals under the Fair Housing Act (FHAct), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

Fair Housing Act

According to the Fair housing act, rights and obligations:

“The Fair Housing Act prohibits this discrimination because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex (including gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual harassment), familial status, and disability.”

Here the disability could be physical or mental either. A disability that limits an individual from performing normal life activities. Therefore, the landlords cannot discriminate and deny the request for reasonable accommodation to a disabled individual under the fair housing act.

A reasonable accommodation request can also be an emotional support animal for a disabled individual. Therefore, the landlords cannot;

• Deny assistance animals in the building,
• Demand extra pet fees to keep the ESA in the building,
• Demand the ESA parent to get their ESAs specially trained,
• Question about the details of a person’s disability.

With that being said, federal laws do not provide any protection if the emotional support animal harms the landlord’s property or other tenants. The landlord can charge for the damage and even ask to remove ESA from the building by giving an extra 10-day notice in these cases.

Section 504 of the American Rehabilitation act

Section 504 of the American Rehabilitation Act states that disabled individuals cannot be discriminated against by the housing that receives federal financial assistance.

Therefore, schools or college dorms are prohibited from discriminating against individuals with a disability or denying their request for reasonable accommodation.

The housing authorities face the same obligation under Section 504 of the rehabilitation act that they cannot;

• Deny assistance animals in the building
• Demand extra pet fees to keep the ESA in the building
• Demand the ESA parent to get their ESAs specially trained
• Question about the details of a person’s disability

Similarly, housing authorities can waive the access of an emotional support animal to no-pet buildings if the ESA harms the housing property or other tenants.

Air Carrier Access Act

Earlier, the DOT(Department of Transportation) obliged airlines to allow emotional support animals on the planes and restricted them from demanding extra pet fees for flying under Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA).

However, ACAA withdrew all the protection it used to offer in 2021. For that very reason, DOT has given a green flag to airlines, and now, it’s up to them if they want to allow ESA flying or charge them like a normal pet.

Note: PSD and service animals are still allowed to travel in aircraft. Psychiatrically disabled individuals can travel with their trained dogs if they have PSD Letter signed by state-licensed health professionals.

Americans with Disabilities Act

Since 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits any kind of discrimination against disabled Individuals in the United States. The protections offered by the ADA are somewhat similar to the Fair Housing section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination against race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability(added later.) However, the difference lies in that the ADA solely protects Disabled Individuals.

Another difference lies in the range of the ADA, which is much wider than the FHA. The ADA protections extend to other areas of public life other than public accommodations, including transportation, employment, education, etc.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) manages that employers would not violate the ADA by discriminating against employees based on their disability. Similarly, the United States Department of Transportation makes sure that all the transit authorities in the U.S. make every necessary effort to make public transit vehicles and facilities convenient for disabled individuals as per the ADA.

You should also know that Any state or local government, company, business, and even non-profit organization that serves the citizens must allow Service animals with disabled individuals. For example, service animals are allowed in public places like malls, stores, restaurants, local government agencies, schools, universities, and colleges.