Emotional Support Animals vs Service Animals
Nowadays, more and more people are acquiring service animals or emotional support animals (ESAs), which are meant to help meet particular needs. However, a service animal has obligations and requirements that an ESA does not have – and if this is the case, your animal might be misclassified. This can lead to penalties and other consequences if you deliberately lie about the animal’s status.
Emotional Support Animals
ESAs are animals with no particular training, but who have been prescribed, so to speak, by a medical professional to help treat a condition. It does happen that some people choose to obtain fake documentation to pretend their animal is an ESA, but they tend to think only of the potential benefits this status can bring them (for example, getting to have their animal in a ‘no-pets’ building), instead of the potential consequences for being found out.
An apartment or condo owner can ask certain questions in order to spot the fakers, but the questions must be judicious in terms of accusation, stopping short of infringing on a person’s privacy. For example, under Florida’s law, an owner can ask whether the animal’s purpose is to assist with a disability, but they may not pry further for details. A person may choose to volunteer that information, but the landlord cannot ask.
Service Animals Have Specific Tasks
In comparison, a support animal focuses much more stringent restrictions, in both Florida and federal law. Only dogs and miniature horses may serve as support animals, and they must be trained to perform specific tasks to aid a person with some kind of disability. As with ESAs, potential housing providers cannot ask about the specifics of the disability the service animal assists with, but they can ask about the tasks it performs. They can refuse a service animal if it proves too much to control or causes too much damage, but only then.
Discrimination against people with ESAs or support animals is perhaps less common than it used to be, but it still happens. This is true despite the law being firmly on the side of the animal’s owner, as a discriminatory neighbor or landlord may be able to cause trouble for a person who simply wishes to be left alone. If this is happening to you, you do not have to face it on your own.
Contact A Tampa Landlord-Tenant Attorney
If you have an ESA or service dog, you have the same right to a clean and quiet home as anyone else does. The right attorney can help ensure that is what you receive. A Tampa landlord-tenant attorney from the Seward Law Office will work hard to get all your questions answered – call us today at 813-252-6789 to schedule a consultation.
Source:
flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/760.27
