A Step Backward for Mental Health and Fair Housing
Reprinted with permission from the June 2, 2026 edition of the Daily Business Review
June 02, 2026 at 02:23 PM By Matthew W. Dietz
For decades, federal enforcement and court decisions recognized that emotional support animals could qualify as a reasonable accommodation under fair housing law. Now, the administration has taken the position that they were never covered at all.
On May 22, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published an enforcement memo stating that they will no longer enforce the Fair Housing Act as it relates to emotional support animals (ESA). HUD’s decision to stop enforcing the Fair Housing Act for emotional support animals is not a technical policy adjustment. It is a direct blow to people with mental health disabilities who rely on those animals to remain stable, safe, and housed. For decades, federal enforcement and court decisions recognized that emotional support animals could qualify as a reasonable accommodation under fair housing law. Now, the administration has taken the position that they were never covered at all. This shift is legally unsound and sends a damaging public message that psychiatric disabilities deserve less respect and less protection than other disabilities.
This policy change is not isolated. On May 4, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announced a federal initiative to reduce reliance on psychiatric medications and promote non-pharmaceutical treatments. The details differ from HUD’s housing policy, but the message is strikingly similar: government officials are increasingly comfortable second-guessing the choices that people with mental health disabilities make with their doctors, their therapists, and their families. That is a troubling direction for public policy.
The core purpose of disability rights laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Fair Housing Act, to allow a person with a disability to live, work, and participate fully in community life with the supports that person may need. One of the basic maxims underlying these laws is “Nothing About Us Without Us,” meaning that personal treatment decisions should be made by an individual with a disability, and not by family, health care providers, or governmental policy makers; and policies that affect people with disabilities should be made with input from the disability community.
Depression, anxiety, trauma, and related mental health conditions are not rare, and neither are the supports people use to manage them. For some, that support is medication. For others, it is therapy, routine, family, faith, or community. For many, it also includes an animal that reduces panic, interrupts isolation, provides grounding, and makes daily life more manageable. According to data from the CDC, in 2023, the percentage of adults who took prescription medication for depression was 11.4%. Six percent of those with depression did not receive treatment because of the costs involved. Americans spend more than $18 billion on antidepressants. Public policy should recognize that reality, not mock it or wish it away.
One in five households in the United States reports that one or more of their pets are emotional support animals for a mental health disability. There is a wealth of research relating to the effects of animals that assist people with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and victims of domestic violence by reducing stress, loneliness, panic, and emotional distress while providing comfort, grounding, routine, and a greater sense of safety and emotional stability. For most homes that do not have rules that limit animals or the types of animals, this is never an issue. For those residential facilities that prohibit pets or impose restrictions on pets, the Fair Housing Act allows residents to request a modification of those rules if there is a disability-related need for the animal.
The process to request an ESA as an accommodation is straightforward: a person with a disability makes a request, and the housing provider may then ask for verification from a medical provider with knowledge of the disability and the need for the animal. There are three conditions that must be met for the request to be approved. First, the animal requested must be reasonable considering the type of housing, which generally means a normal household pet, and not an alligator or turkey. Second, the presence of the animal must lessen the effects of a disability. Third, the individual animal must not pose a risk of actual (not hypothetical) danger. The housing provider is not entitled to details relating to the disability. Such information is not only unnecessary; providing health-related information to neighbors could be stigmatizing and harmful.
Critics often speak as if anyone can simply label a pet an emotional support animal and force a landlord to accept it. That is false. Fair housing law already requires a disability-related need, allows housing providers to request reliable verification in appropriate cases, and permits denial when an accommodation is unreasonable or when a particular animal poses an actual risk. The law has limits. What HUD is doing now is not closing a loophole. It is withdrawing protection from people who have long depended on that protection.
Some argue that people abuse the system to keep their animals, but abuse by some does not lessen the need for most. That has always been true, and it will always be true with many rights that the law protects. Mental health disabilities are often invisible, and because they are invisible, they are frequently doubted, minimized, or treated as less real than physical impairments. That skepticism has consequences, for example, in the United States, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 44. Failure to recognize mental illness fuels stigma, discourages people from seeking help, and makes it easier for government officials to treat essential supports as optional indulgences.
The HUD decision not to investigate these cases does not change existing private litigation rights, it will simply make relief harder to obtain and more expensive to pursue. People with disabilities who once could seek an administrative remedy will be pushed toward federal litigation, where cases take longer, cost more, and place greater strain on tenants and housing providers alike. A policy that increases conflict while reducing access to justice is not sensible reform.
More important than litigation rights, for the millions of people with depression, anxiety, and similar disorders, this administration is systematically removing the essential right to make decisions about their own health care and daily lives. By discouraging antidepressant medication or the use of emotional support animals, the administration adds stigma, and fewer people will receive the treatment that they need for serious, and potentially deadly, mental illness. Emotional support animals are not a fad, and they are not the problem. The problem is a policy choice that treats mental health needs as less real when the law and basic human dignity demand exactly the opposite.
Matthew W. Dietz is the founder of Dislaw Consulting and a civil rights attorney with more than 30 years of experience in disability rights, accessibility, healthcare, and fair housing. He is a former law professor and nationally recognized advocate for disability inclusion and equal access.
Reprinted with permission from the June 2, 2026 edition of the Daily Business review© 2026 ALM Global Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-256-2472 or asset-and-logo-licensing@alm.com.
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