HUD Announces Shift Away from Disability Discrimination Cases Involving Emotional Support Animals; DREDF Issues Summary and Policy Brief
Jun 01, 2026
By Kayla Blackwell, NLIHC Senior Housing Policy Analyst and Renee Williams, NLIHC Senior Policy Advisor
HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) recently issued a memorandum, dated May 22, announcing the agency’s enforcement shift away from housing discrimination cases concerning Emotional Support Animals (ESAs). Instead, HUD will instead pursue cases “involving animals trained to provide disability-related assistance,” adopting a much narrower view of the types of animal-related accommodations covered by the FHA. The memo also reaffirmed the September 2025 recission of HUD’s prior guidance from 2013 and 2020 that discuss assistance animals, including ESAs, as reasonable accommodations under the “Fair Housing Act” (FHA). Per HUD’s rescinded 2020 guidance, ESAs provide “therapeutic emotional support for individuals with disabilities.”
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) has released a policy brief, “An Enforcement Agency That Won’t Enforce: HUD’s Policy Reversal On Emotional Support Animals,” that summarizes the memo and provides an FAQ.
More specifically, HUD’s May 2026 memo applies the narrower “Americans with Disabilities Act” (ADA) service animal standard for animal-related accommodations to the FHA context. Yet, these statutes are distinct. The FHA protects people with disabilities from discrimination in housing, and, as DREDF explains, the ADA governs public places “like restaurants, stores, and transit.” The ADA also requires that service animals be “individually trained.” As DREDF notes, “Going forward, HUD will use this same trained-animal standard when deciding whether to pursue a fair housing complaint involving an assistance animal. The one difference from the ADA: HUD will still recognize animals other than dogs, as long as the animal has been individually trained to perform disability-related work or tasks.”
The May 2026 memo also announce HUD’s intent to engage in rulemaking regarding “animal-related reasonable accommodations.”
Expected Impacts of the Memo
HUD’s May 2026 memo upends existing HUD guidance regarding ESAs as well as HUD’s own enforcement posture. However, HUD’s memo does not change the underlying body of case law on the ESA issue. Nor is the memo itself a regulation. Furthermore, the memo clearly states that individuals can still file fair housing lawsuits in court.
That said, the practical implications cannot be ignored. Litigation has substantial barriers, particularly for low-income tenants. Moreover, housing providers use HUD’s guidance documents with respect to their own FHA compliance, and fair housing advocates use HUD guidance to protect tenants against discrimination.
DREDF notes that the HUD memo does not impact state or local laws, and people with disabilities living in jurisdictions with ESA protections, such as California. DREDF adds: “If you live outside California, check your state’s fair housing law. Many states have independent protections that are stronger than the federal baseline, and none of them are affected by this memo.”
Read HUD’s 2026 memo.
Read DREDF’s policy brief “An Enforcement Agency That Won’t Enforce: HUD’s Policy Reversal On Emotional Support Animals.”