Service Animals and the Law: Which Animals do the ADA & State Law Recognize? Presenters: Sally Conway, U.S. Dept. of Justice; Ed Eames, PhD; Toni Eames, MS and Aaron McCullough, JD. Wednesday, April 14, 2004 RACHEL: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to today's Web cast. Today is the first of two Web casts that we're going to have on service animals. My name is Rachel Kosoy. I am with the Disability Law Resource Project, or DLRP, your sponsor for today's event. I will be moderating the Web cast and as you E-mail in questions, I will be voicing those questions to our presenters. Just before we get started, I want to remind you about sending us questions. Please go ahead and you can begin submitting questions now as well as throughout the Web cast. In order to do so, if you look on your RealOne Player at the bottom of the screen, there should be something you can click here to submit a question. Or you can just send an E-mail to webcast@ilru.org. And then I will pose those questions to the presenters as they pause for questions. If anybody ends up having technical difficulties today, you can give us a call at (713)-520-0232. Okay, with that out of the way, I would like to introduce today's topic is Service Animals and the Law: Which Animals Do The ADA and State Law Recognize. Today's Web cast which really is going to focus on the definition of assistance animals under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which we'll refer to as the ADA, as well as some state laws and really what those laws say about the rights of people with disabilities who are partnered with service animals. We will discuss some practical applications of the law. We will address common questions and of course take your questions. The second Web cast in this series will take place one month from now almost exactly on Wednesday, May 12th, and on that day we're going to do a real focus on housing and transportation issues as they relate to service animals. So I just wanted to remind you of that and let you know that if we get some questions that are really best suited for next month's Web cast, then I will hold them for next month. Okay, moving on, we have three presenters with us today. I know that the Web site says that we were supposed to have four presenters. I wanted to let you know that Toni Eames is sorry that she's not able to be with us, but she is ill and you can't even hear her when she tries to talk on the phone. So hopefully we look forward to hearing from her next month. Who we do have with us today is Sally Conway. She is with the U.S. Department of Justice. She's going to introduce the concept of service animals addressed by the ADA. Then we have Dr. Ed Eames and he will share some thoughts about how the rubber hits the road when implementing the part of the ADA that applies to service animals. And lastly, James Aaron McCullough, he is a legal specialist with DLRP, and he is going to speak to the efforts of some state laws. So I'd like to give a little bit more introduction about each presenter and go ahead and give that to you guys up front so that we can then let the conversation happen, as it will. And I won't have to interrupt with more introductions. So first let me tell you a little more about Sally Conway. She is with the U.S. Department of Justice. We love Sally because she works closely with us as well as the ten other DBTACs or ADA education centers around the country. She's very helpful to provide her insight and give us updates from DOJ. She gives great technical assistance. She has established the mediation program with DOJ and for that she has received a very nice award. You will be impressed with her depth of the knowledge. She can be entertaining and as everyone at DOJ knows she has an excellent humor and you will really enjoy her today. A little bit more about Dr. Ed Eames. He is a writer and a professor and certainly an advocate for people with disabilities, specifically those who use assistance animals. He is an adjunct professor of sociology at California State University at Fresno. He uses a guide dog, and his passion is really to educate the public as well as veterinarians about all types of assistance animals. He is the president of the international association of assistance dog partners, which is a self-help network of over 1600 people partnered with guide, hearing and service dogs. There certainly is a lot more to learn about him as well as Sally, so I encourage you to look on our Web site to learn more about them. A number of you may have already heard from Aaron McCullough. He is here at DLRP. He is a legal specialist. He researches, he provides training as well as technical assistance on disability related laws. As an attorney, as well as a social worker in training, he really is able to analyze the law as well as its effect on people with disabilities. And he is the author of one of the documents that you guys have as your materials through the Web cast page. Okay, I think that's enough from me. I'm ready to turn this over to you guys. So Sally, why don't you get us started. SALLY: Thank you, Rachel. I would be happy to. I will also do the best I can to live up to my can be entertaining introduction. First of all, thank you for inviting me and thanks everybody for taking time out of what I know are your busy days to pay attention to this issue. I've been here at the Department of Justice for better than ten years and frankly just between us it's the longest I've ever held any job in my life; but so many years after the passage and implementation of the ADA the number of service animal complaints that we get remains just remarkably high. Back in the old days, we used to think that service animal issues theoretically would, should be easy to resolve and to fix the issues because we thought in our stupidity, perhaps, or our naiveté that it really was a no brainer. You're not talking about a financial issue. You're talking about changing, you know, basically stereotypes and long held assumptions and we just thought it was going to be simple. Well, we were completely wrong. It to this day it remains a very significant problem throughout the country in all sectors of business and governmental entities. Far less in governmental Title II kinds of entities, but still it remains. What I would like to do is basically give two parts of my presentation and one is to talk about what the definition is of service animals, and again, we're limiting this scope of the discussion to the Americans with Disabilities Act, and not other federal or state statutes. And the second part is what are the requirements under the ADA with regard to service animals. I know sometimes something is remarkably clear in my head when I'm saying it. If it's not clear to you, please let me know. I take absolutely no offense. The first thing is the definition under the ADA of a service animal and this is the only thing I will read to you, and I encourage everybody to -- if you're not familiar with it as it stands at this point, to become familiar with it. And its very simply is a service animal means any guide dog, signal dog or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including but not limited to guiding individuals with impaired vision, alerting individuals with impaired hearing to intruders or sounds, providing minimal protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair, or fetching dropped items. That is the regulatory definition of service animal in the Department of Justice regulations. And there are some very key parts of that that we use and other people need to look at to determine, you know, what is a service animal, who is entitled to use a service animal. And I would just like to focus on three of those things: One is that it's an animal that is individually trained and that is very specifically the language. And individual training simply means that that animal has been trained to perform specific work or specific tasks, and that's really critical. An animal under this definition, an animal's innate ability to provide or do something or an innate attribute is not -- does not constitute individually trained. So what you look at is/has the animal -- again we're talking dog or other animal -- been individually trained to perform work or tasks for -- on behalf of an individual with a disability? And that's really important. And it doesn't say what kinds of tasks. It doesn't say what kinds of work because to do so -- and I know that sometimes -- well, very often frankly covered entities will say why can't you be more specific? Give us a list of what constitutes a legitimate task or work so that we can -- we'll make it black and white and we can do that. We can't do that and we won't do that because people with disabilities have all kinds of needs and all kinds of desires so to do any kind of a laundry list would be -- would just do a great disservice. So, again, you look at training to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability. Then the last part of that definition that is really important is that a service animal is used by a person with a disability. Very often -- and I'm sure folks who, you know, do technical assistance on phones, you get a lot of times somebody will call and say, well, I think it's just a pet. Or, you know, it's somebody I know that it's not a service animal because they don't have a disability. You need to look at in order to invoke coverage under the ADA, the user of the animal that presumably has been trained to perform work or tasks is a person with a disability. And that's very, very important. One of the things is -- that the big question is what kinds of animals can legally be a service animal? And I'll tell you, I don't know that anybody knows the complete answer to that question, but I think you need to do an analysis. Because the language is very clear, it says dogs or other animals, that animal must be able to be trained and to perform a task. I don't know that, you know, a spider can be trained to perform a task. Now, I may be wrong, but I don't think I'm wrong on that one. But certainly a number of different kinds of animals can very effectively be trained to perform work or a task that will assist that person with a disability. And again we go back to the issue of it isn't an issue of it being an innate attribute of an animal. And I guess this gets to the issue of support animals. I hate the term support animals because I think it is so broadly used and it is probably not very often correctly used. I think that a great many people assume that somebody perhaps with a psychiatric disability would not qualify to use a service animal by the very nature of their disability, and I think that they are wrong. I think that there are -- I just read a couple of days ago, and I can't even remember the Web site and I should have written it down, but a lot of folks with psychiatric disabilities and mental health disabilities are very effectively using a service animal. Because that animal has been trained to do something very specific for them, to alert an oncoming -- perhaps a panic attack, to remove somebody from a situation, you know, that may be detrimental to them, and these animals have very specifically been trained to do that job. By that definition, that is a service animal. If the mere presence of an animal -- for instance, like, you know, my cat or my cocker spaniel, if the mere presence calms me down, that is not going to qualify as a legal service animal under the definition of the ADA because that animal hasn't been trained to perform a specific task or work on behalf of the individual with a disability. Does that make sense so far? RACHEL: Yes, it does to me. ED: This is Ed Eames and I'm all ears. SALLY: Well, that's heartening to know. RACHEL: and actually you have already answered some of the questions that have come in. We're getting a lot of questions in so that's great. So people keep sending them and if anything wasn't clear -- if you have questions about what Sally just said, go ahead and E-mail them in and I'll ask her to clarify for you. SALLY: Great. If I can, I'd like to -- is now okay, Rachel, to continue quickly with the ADA requirements? But again, to go back to the support animal, I think we need to be very, very careful that we don't just sort of poo-poo when somebody says it's a support animal and just assume that it's a comfort animal. And I think those are two different things and I think the -- I think, Rachel, you said that Ed would be talking about when the rubber hits the road. I think one of the things when the rubber hits the road is what does that animal do to the person with the disability? Despite what it's called, you look at the training, the task or the work it performs and obviously does that person have a disability, and that in a very sort of pragmatic sense is in my mind how you look at what is a service animal. And I think in time we're going to see lots of different animals that are going to be able to be trained and work effectively for folks with disabilities. So stay tuned. I think it's an ever-evolving issue. In terms of what does the ADA require for service animals and actually the ADA requires nothing for service animals. The ADA requires -- has very specific requirements for people with disabilities who use service animals. The main thing is, under modification of policies, and that's really where you will find all of the requirements relating to service animal issues, and that is, is that covered entities have to modify their policies to allow people with service animals to be accompanied by that service animal in all the places where the public is allowed to go. I mean, that is -- I mean that's the bottom line, nonlegalistic terms. If I can go somewhere in my wheelchair, then somebody with a service animal should be allowed, and assuming it met the definition, should be allowed too the exact same level of access. A service animal is as important to somebody with a disability that uses that service animal as my wheelchair is to me, and people need to start understanding that. The days of separating people who use service animals from their service animals for either expediency or stereotypes or fear or whatever, those days have to stop. A service animal is a mobility device. It breathes and it needs to be fed. It's a mobility device, it's an orientation device, it doesn't -- as long as it's been trained to perform work or tasks, it needs to be with its owner. Plain and simple. Also because somebody uses a service animal, they can't be segregated from the rest of the population. The fact that somebody uses a service animal does not mean they have to, you know, go to the back of the restaurant or in the back room in the local library or come after hours for a doctor's appointment. Segregation -- unless there is a very legitimate reason -- cannot occur, just by the mere fact that someone uses a service animal. The famous question is what questions can be asked by a covered entity of somebody that comes in with an animal? And somebody says it's a service animal. My advice always is -- okay, I know that's in writing and it's a matter of record now, I cannot give advice. My suggestions to covered entities, to businesses and to state and local governments is always err on the side of smartness. If somebody comes and presents themselves and they say this is the service animal, and you're not really sure if it's a service animal, but there is no issue. The animal is behaving just fine, you know, there is not a direct threat issue, it makes a lot of sense just to say assume it's a service animal. But if an entity decides to question that, here is what they can and cannot do: They can ask the user of a service animal if that animal is required as a service animal because of a disability. They may ask that. And they may -- and I know this is a bone of contention in some circumstances ask what types of tasks that animal might perform. They may not ever ask the person who uses a service animal what type of disability they have. They may not ask where the animal was trained or require any kind of certification of completion of training. They may not ask for any evidence of disability. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't carry anything around with me that says the nature of my disability. I have enough junk to carry and I never have that. Leastly when maybe -- when I go to a movie or go to a restaurant, I'm not going to have that information. So aside from it being illegal to ask that, it's just -- it's going to be counterproductive. Also entities may not require a deposit or charge anyone a surcharge for coming in with a service animal, and we still see this, and I know that folks who use service animals see this all the time in hotels, large hotels and little mom and pop owned hotels. You can't require a deposit. Even if they have a pet deposit, you can't do it. There are a couple of things that usually in sort of short term interactions, perhaps going to a hotel, restaurants, doctor's offices, it's not typically an issue, but where it is an issue is if somebody is incarcerated. It is an issue if somebody is hospitalized but there is never a requirement that the covered entity provide for care or supervision of that animal -- of that service animal. And care and supervision very simply means feeding, grooming, taking outside for relief, shall we say. Any of that stuff. There is no requirement, and if somebody, for instance, is going -- somebody who uses a service animal is going to be somewhere for any length of time and still that service animal has -- they have the right to have the service animal with them but they may not be able to perform those functions, it is the responsibility of the person with the disability to make arrangements for that care of that animal if it's necessary. The only time that service animals can be excluded -- it's a very, very narrow set of circumstances in which that can occur. And they primarily -- all the time falls under if an entity is able to articulate that the presence of that animal, that service animal, poses a direct threat to the health and safety of others. Now, unlike the employment provisions under direct threat, under Title II and Title III, which the Department of Justice has jurisdiction over, it is limited to the direct threat to the health and safety of others. For those who may not know, under Title I, employment, the direct threat is to the health and safety of the employee and others, but this is limited to the direct threat to others. Direct threat is -- it's a very high standard. It has to be the decision that something poses a direct threat to others has to be based on current objective information, the probability that harm will occur, not the mere possibility, and it can't be based on stereotypes or speculation. Very often -- excuse me, I think I'm catching what Ed has -- very often we see a lot -- we see it a lot with taxicabs that -- and restaurants especially. I don't know, those two groups seem to just jump to the forefront of my mind that they may have had a bad experience with a dog, for instance, at some point in their life, and they now make an assumption that every time a dog comes into their cab or into their place of business, it might growl at people. It might bite someone, it might do this or it might do that. That would be an illegal exclusion if it was based on that. They need to make a decision if an animal -- and I will tell you, I don't know how many truly trained service animals this is really ever an issue with. But if an animal starts growling and bares its teeth and it's not just a one time little thing, you know, if it settles under the table, then a covered entity could ask -- could ask the person with the disability to remove the animal; but again, it has to rise to a level where it's not one little yip, you know, and that does not mean that that animal is a direct threat. The other thing is animals can be excluded if it fundamentally alters the nature of that business, and I'm the queen of bad analogies and this is so painfully obvious, but if you're at a play and live theater and somebody had a service animal in there, and again I'm picking on dogs, and the dog just continually barked and could not be controlled or that couldn't stop, then that would fundamentally alter that play and that experience, and that would be okay if it was a continual barking and a continual disruption for removing the animal. Again, if that dog yipped once or twice, that is not going to rise to the level of the fundamental alteration. With all that being said -- the other thing I forgot is the animal can be excluded, but if that person with a disability can't be put out and never come back. They can't do that to that person. And that person with a disability, if he or she has some manner of taking care of the animal somewhere else, that person with a disability, if he or she is able, absolutely has to be allowed to come back into that establishment. I guess with all that being said, that is pretty much my cut on the definition of service animals, what the law requires, and again, the exclusion issue is very narrowly defined. It used to be that hospitals said, no, you couldn't come into a patient room. That doesn't fly anymore. Certainly having a service animal in an operating theater probably would be a direct threat in compromising a sterile environment, but beyond that they need to be careful. And frankly I think there are more germs in a hospital than a clean well groomed service animal would be the least of their problems. RACHEL: Sadly, I think you're true. I think that's true, Sally. Well, and I think some of what you're getting to also -- that's really important for people to realize is that you have to make these decisions on a case-by-case basis. SALLY: Absolutely. You know, I mean the days of sort of the blanket exclusions and blanket policies are slowly -- but they are, you know, going by the wayside. Eventually we will see people starting to make policy decisions, and every time somebody excludes somebody with a disability that uses a service animal, that's a policy issue, and people need to make decisions smartly and based on what it's presenting at that time and not on what they might have heard. Especially as we move to using a broader array of types of animals. RACHEL: Okay, I do have a couple of questions that came in that directly relate to what you've been saying. SALLY: Okay. RACHEL: So I'm going to -- Ed, I'm going to jump in before you just to pose these questions so people get some clarification before we go on. Okay, I've got three that are really about the definition. One is does the task that the service animal is going to do -- does that have to mitigate the physical or mental impairments on which the disability is based? The definition just says of benefit to. SALLY: That's a very good question. I don't know -- I hate now using the word mitigate after our Supreme Court has used it. I think that maybe the easiest way to look at it is that there needs to be a direct link to the person -- sort of similar to a reasonable accommodation analogy, that there needs to be a direct link to the task that that animal is performing and that person with a disability. I think that they probably need to be fairly fundamental, but I don't think that in terms of -- I don't think that we can be so narrow, and again, it is on a case-by-case basis, to limit it solely to something that in somebody else's mind that's a necessary task for a person with a disability. Because I think that leaves everything open to somebody else making decisions as to what is important and what is critical to somebody's daily life. So I think rather than mitigate, I think maybe thinking in terms of how is the task related to that disability. RACHEL: Okay. You're going to -- I have a question that relates to that, too. I'll hold that one for a second. One example here that somebody specifically asked about is, if there is a person who can't walk, they have a dog who carries their medication. Is that considered a service dog? SALLY: Oh, well, I'll tell you I don't know because I think that if I can't carry something myself, I guess I'm having a hard time making the connection. If that animal is doing something that I can't do, then I think the answer would be yes, but I think we also get back to the definition of being trained. Now, a lot of animals, if you put something around their neck and if they just follow, does that make them a service animal? And I'm not sure that that answer would be yes. I think it really depends on what it is that that animal is doing. I think if it's simply carrying medication without other information, I don't know what else there might be, I think that it might not be. RACHEL: Okay. My guess is, too, that there is probably more to that story. SALLY: I do, too. RACHEL: Than we're getting. SALLY: Because I know that there are animals that have been trained to carry medication and have been trained to recognize certain episodes, for instance, that somebody might be having and get down right next to that person and literally make that medicine available to them and then summon help. RACHEL: Right. SALLY: That's a different issue than simply being a backpack. RACHEL: Okay well, let's go on to the next definition-related question. They want to know if the tasks that the animal does are natural -- let me read what she says. I can't paraphrase. The task they do must be natural, not just trained, right? A hearing dog running to the door when there is a knock is natural, and then coming back and notifying is the trained part. SALLY: Oh, okay. Well, I think some things that animals do just by nature, they're going to continue to do, but it's what they -- it's always that step further. You know, most animals are going to react to noise -- well, I can't say that My cocker spaniel does not react to noise because she's lazy, but so I don't think that that's the -- it's not simply the -- the task is not just that that animal hears noise, all animals that have hearing will hear noise. It's what they do with it that they normally wouldn't do, and it's that they come back and they alert a person. If the phone rings, they are taught to recognize that sound and to come back and alert that person. So I think animals are used because they have a lot of innate skills that can be trained and honed to meet very specific task and work needs of people with disabilities. RACHEL: Okay. We're getting a lot of questions about training, basically to summarize them, if a dog that's in training considered a service animal? The interest is are animals in training covered? SALLY: They are absolutely not covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. They are covered, I know, by a number of state laws and they aren't for two reasons: One is they haven't yet been trained so they do not meet the individually trained, past tense part of the definition, and very often the handler is not a person with a disability. So no. Under the ADA, service animals in training are not covered for protection. RACHEL: Great, okay. Let me pose one more question and this might actually transition us very nicely to Ed. I hear a train in the background. SALLY: I do, too. ED: You hear it in my background. I'm very close to the Amtrak train tracks. RACHEL: Okay, we all know where Ed is now. I'm going to pose this question and maybe Sally you can comment first and then Ed, why don't you take us from there and run. Okay, I'm going to paraphrase this. This is a long question. Sally, you had sort of referred to it in your initial comments about how DOJ has changed the guidance about service animals. There is specific emphasis in this note saying that it was done without public comment, and there is now a third question that can be asked of people with disabilities who use service animals, this third question is what tasks has your service animal been trained to perform. And -- okay, well, some of the issues sort of brought up -- are the follow-up has not been addressed in terms of what business owners and managers can do with the information that they gather based on this question. That there is great concern that people who use service animals have lost a great deal of privacy here about their disabilities because the tasks that the animal performs is often very revealing about personal information and the disability. There is a question about -- you know, what is really the purpose of adding this? It can appear that it really is empowering business representatives, even including, you know, a teenager at a fast-food restaurant or an older adult greeter in a discount department store, that they now are empowered to decide whether the work that the service dog is providing meets their standards for what's appropriate tasks and so that they now are deciding whether or not someone with a service animal can enter. SALLY: Yeah, and you know the questioner is right on the mark. There are a number of issues. The whole issue of being able to ask if an animal is a service animal or what tasks the animal has been trained to perform is -- I have not a real issue with they ask if an animal is a service animal, but certainly the issue of what tasks the animal has been trained to perform is a very difficult issue. There is absolutely no question. If I were to use a service animal, and I'm in a chair, you know, that's -- big deal, but if somebody has an invisible disability, then very simply stating what task that animal has been trained to perform absolutely is disclosed -- there is no question about it. I don't know -- I don't know what the answer to this question is and to this issue because I think that if somebody -- I think it would be a violation of the law if somebody had, as a policy, to routinely ask every time anybody said it was a service animal, regardless of their circumstances. If they went through that litany of questions, I think that that would be a violation. I think that there are -- there are times -- part of the problem is the definition of a service animal, and part of the problem is that folks who are covered under the ADA are people that have disabilities. So the assumption has to be that somebody that says they're using a service animal has a disability. And I don't know -- I don't know how to balance that. I think that there are a lot of issues -- you know, God I'm sounding like a bureaucrat and I truly don't mean to. I don't know what the answer to this is and how you strike a balance. I think that certainly in the relatively near future our Title III regulations will undergo a periodic review of rules and the regulations themselves will be opened up for public comment and I would be willing to bet that the service animal area is going to be huge. In terms of the guidance that we did, and that would have been in the technical assistance piece, that is simply guidance. It is a policy interpretation. It's not regulatory guidance. And there is no requirement that technical assistance documents, sort of the same as EEOC's policy guidance have to go out for public comments. Certainly any change in the regulations or review of the regulations must, by law, be open to public comment and it absolutely will be. I don't know what the answer is. I completely understand the concern, and we all do here completely understand the concern, but I don't know where it's going to go. And that's the best answer that I can give you. RACHEL: Well, thank you. Thank you for being frank, Sally. Okay, Ed. ED: Yes. RACHEL: Are you ready? ED: I'm ready. RACHEL: All right, take it away. ED: Ok. If I can just comment on what Sally was talking about, our organization, the International Association of Assistance Dog partners has a board member, an individual with a psychiatric service dog, and when indeed she is asked what task does her Yorkshire terrier perform for her, and obviously this is not the traditional Labrador golden retriever type assistance dog, her answer is simply, he provides medical alert information. He alerts me to any kind of medical crisis and that's it. Beyond that, she simply shrugs it off, and I think that's the nature of indicating what the task is and how that can be taken care of. There is another issue I want to spin off of what Sally was talking about if in terms an assistance dog or service animal were to be threatening entities providing service, et cetera, and the illustration she was barking in a theater with a live performance and/or in a restaurant situation, threatening other customers, that animal can be asked to be taken out and the person can come back without the animal. We had the opposite. A friend of ours in England was having trouble with a local Indian restaurant, and finally there was a demonstration and everything else and the newspaper report that came out afterwards quoted the restaurant owner saying he didn't mind the dog coming in, it was that person coming in with the dog who demanded that he do everything for her and if she wanted to send the dog in, fine, as long as she didn't come in. So I think that's the way interpretation can go. I want to focus more on the reality of those of us working with guide, hearing and service dogs. I think Sally -- I want to congratulate you. It was fantastic updating and I think you handled the whole situation well and I want to stay particularly out of the legal arena, as definition but look at what are the consequences of the ADA , what are the issues that many of us still have who are partnered with assistance dogs. And I am partnered with a guide dog. My wife has a guide dog and we travel throughout the country. We lecture, et cetera, et cetera. When we lived in New York City, our most common problems we had were with taxi cab drivers and with restaurants. Particularly restaurants that were Chinese, Japanese, et cetera, and this was both pre- and post-ADA guidelines, regulations, et cetera. And of course, it always was you can't bring that dog in here. With the taxicab driver it was very simple. The taxi driver would sort of pull up for the fare, and this was in Manhattan where I worked, and as soon as the taxicab driver saw there was a dog with me, he or she would drive away. And these became problems that I faced on a regular basis. And Sally, I must commend you that these are not over. This is -- what, 2004, 12 years -- 13 years after those definitions were --12 years after the guidelines and we're still having restaurants, we're still having taxi drivers who say in effect you can't bring that dog in here or I won't take you with that dog. And these are things that play out in an every day basis. The biggest problem, however, we're still having is with medical facilities, hospitals, physician's offices, and a lot of cases there, we're getting the issue that's raised -- and I don't want you to come into my office because I have an allergic patient and it was several years ago that I was going to visit -- my wife and I – were going to visit a friend of mine, who was hospitalized in Tulsa, Oklahoma, St. John's Medical Center, a major, major facility. And we were not permitted beyond the lobby area. We were not permitted to visit our friend in a private room just awaiting some diagnostic tests and we were told very simply by the hospital administrator who intervened that it was hospital policy not to permit any animals beyond the lobby area. We pointed out to him the law. We went into all kinds of praxism, et cetera. Nothing meant anything and eventually we were not permitted to see our friend. When we then pursued it and we did so with some advice from attorneys at the Department of Justice, we finally did renegotiate a policy that admitted that assistance dogs, service animals, were permitted in the hospital and in all areas that the public was permitted to come into. And what went beyond that, I think was fascinating, is that a couple of years later we ran into some veterinarians who told us that nowadays St. John's Medical Center even invites therapy dogs into the facility to provide support and comfort to patients there. But it doesn't end. I was just involved in another medical hospital case in which a woman in Pennsylvania with a guide dog and who was stung by a bee and was very allergic to bee stings, her doctor immediately told her immediately to get into the nearby hospital. She was not permitted into the emergency room with her guide dog. She had been driven to the facility by a neighbor and she had to -- if she was going to receive treatment -- permit the neighbor to hold the dog outside the facility while she was treated in. And the case then went under ADA -- was brought in federal court under the ADA and a unanimous jury verdict was given for the client. The hospital interestingly said that they had not really denied her service. They had only delayed it a bit and if she had just left her dog out immediately, she could have been taken care of right away, and of course the old sort of thing that they pulled out was there might be allergic patients in that ward at that time, there might be phobic patients in the ward at that time, in the emergency room, and therefore, they were only doing this to protect their other patients and it comes down to that protecting their ability to provide their services to their clientele. And the lawyer involved in it very successfully argued that this was all based on a stereotype of what kinds of things. There was no evidence that that went on. I think more and more we're going to find this trying to oppose one kind of disability against another, the alleged allergy and phobia versus the disabled person's right to bring in a service animal with him or her into the facility. So those are the sorts of every day kinds of cases we have. Now I'm there with my guide dog, I don't have a hidden disability. And folks with hidden disabilities, and also with nontraditional assistance dogs, I am and we're talking about dogs here pretty exclusively are sort of on the firing line who are hearing much more often than those of us with guide dogs, you can't bring that dog in here, you don't need that dog, et cetera. I think it's a big educational process at well. One of the major hidden disabilities is deafness, and we don't think of that that much. We think primarily of the psychiatric disability as a hidden disability, but deaf folks don't wear hearing aids usually and they are involved in as many problems as folks with psychiatric disabilities. And we come down to the same thing, that it is all right to be there with our dog, our assistance dog providing it meets the definitional criteria raised by Sally, providing the dog is under our control. That's it. And we are permitted in there, but on a daily basis those of us who are partnered with guide, hearing assistance dogs, and guide, hearing service dogs frequently face the problem of access denial and we have to go through that -- it becomes another element, if you will, in adding to the whole disabling condition where these challenges arise. We've got the law behind us on a federal basis, but implementing those laws, making it widely known and getting the educational element involved is, again, an extremely important issue that we're constantly dealing with. IEP has put out some access brochures in multiple languages, which has been produced in our newsletter, partners forum. Those have been widely disseminated within our membership population, well beyond it, and it really works very well because you can hand this over. It has simply in several different languages the basic idea that the law permits us to bring our dogs with us into taxis, into restaurants and into all other places and what's nice about this brochure is that the individual can place his or her own photo with his or her own assistance dog on the cover. And that makes it an extremely valuable document, and it's primarily educational that it goes on there as well. I'll pause at that moment. RACHEL: Okay. All right, you guys, we have -- I think about 50 questions here. So how fast can you talk? ED: Go for them. RACHEL: Okay, Aaron, is there anything that you feel is important to throw in before we tackle these questions? AARON: Well, actually, Dr. Eames and I were talking before the Web cast and to be honest he was schooling me on proper language and at the time I kind of poo-pooed it, and as I think about it, I believe it might be a good idea to kind of review the litany of different terms used in describing the various dogs and service animals types that we may confront for somebody in the audience who may have not read the literature or been introduced to people with a variety of service animals. Does anybody want to take a shot at that? ED: Sure, I'd love to because this is something that I'm constantly working on, and we have an organization of organizations called CATO, the Coalition of Assistance Dog Organizations and IDT is a charter member as is Guide Dog Use, Incorporated, Assistance Dogs, International which is a coalition of training programs which train service dogs and the Council of Guide Dog Schools and all of us have gotten together and used common terminology. The federal law calls them all service animals. And as Sally read it, it's dogs and other animals. But if you'll notice in all of our discussions so far it's dogs, dogs, dogs. I'd be very curious and I'd love to know how many other service animals, other than dogs, that is, are working at the present time. We certainly know there are guide horses. I think there is four of them that have come out of the guide horse foundation and we certainly know that there are some monkeys that have been trained to work with quadriplegics and a number of other animals as well, but it's dogs we're primarily talking about. The major categories then are assistance dogs and there are three categories of assistance dogs. There are guide dogs who work with blind and visually impaired individuals, hearing dogs that work with deaf and hard of hearing individuals, and service dogs working with individuals with disabilities other than blindness and deafness. So that becomes in many ways the residual category. So whether we're talking about a seizure alert dog, a dog that is providing physical support that somebody leans on, a dog that pulls a wheelchair, a dog that medically -- alerts to a medical condition. But whatever else may be. All of them are indeed just service dogs and fall into that general residual category. And I think that if we could all agree on that terminology, it would be wonderful. We could get away from talking past one another or across one another, whatever else. That would be wonderful. RACHEL: and I think that one of the pieces that is listed on our web page -- Aaron, what's the name of your piece? AARON: Oh, gosh – RACHEL: It's the E-bulletin. on DLRP and it talks about -- the title is something about I got to see pigs fly, et cetera, and in that there is a very nice breakdown of the different categories and types of service animals. AARON: and while it doesn't perfectly agree with Dr. Eames' list, I think even that illustrates that this is something that is still debated and there are groups whose interest would be served by a more common definition or set of definitions and other groups that claimed that they would be disserviced. ED: This is Ed, again. I'd like to indicate that the flying pigs ought to be in our next discussion because the definitions and the regulations and the guidelines are very different under the Air Carrier Access Act than they are in the Department of Justice. AARON: We will of course – ED: That's the flying pig issue and that flying pig apparently, if I'm correct, Sally, would not be permitted in a restaurant. If you remember the incident. AARON: We'll worry about that later. SALLY: But again, for purposes of the ADA, if that pig had been trained individually to perform a task for that person with a disability, then the answer is it probably would be, but the key is is it trained. I mean, I'll tell you at the risk of -- I'll probably offend somebody, well, what the heck, but I had a call of an individual that had a pet Iguana, and he typically would carry the Iguana around on his shoulder and basically said that when he was driving and he would get drowsy when he drove, when his head started bobbing off to the side while he's driving, it would hit the Iguana and the Iguana would stir. I'll tell you, in that instance, that would not qualify as a service animal and again it's a reptile, so I don't know if they're actually considered animals. But I think -- I think it remains to be seen and Aaron I would really like to look at your article. But, again, you know, it's going to be so different and semantics are always so crucial and, you know, it would be nice if we could all agree and we're all human beings and God forbid we agree on anything. AARON: I actually, I think those examples are important to bring up. And I wouldn't want to minimize –- I wouldn't want a definition that was so narrow and going into the state law discussion, that's one of the issues is, you know, whose got the appropriate definition, the ADA or some various state laws. But I wouldn't want a definition that was so narrow that you're going to class out a group of service animals that are doing benefit for people with disabilities, but all too often journalistically and I'm willing to bet the other two speakers would agree, we tend to see the less credible cases, the more provocative types of service animals, the rats, the snakes, the spiders, the Iguanas, these are things that we've heard or recently retired -- a retired adolescent and adult chimpanzees, which is somewhat startling and raises deep concerns. One good example -- and I'm not sure whether this was Dr. Eames brought up to me in another conversation or somebody from another organization, but there was a group of survivors of abuse, particularly women surviving rape and or physical assault who had developed -- they developed a variety of psychological reactions to this. They were claiming particularly generalizing anxiety disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder and they were utilizing -- essentially police dogs that failed that academy training. And they were maintaining that they couldn't leave the home, you know, without the services of this animal and this animal was trained to comfort them but also protect them and that gave them enough of a sense of comfort and psychological ease to leave the home. And they were asserting their rights under the ADA. That one -- on the surface you may want to deny it. It's applicability, but I mean as you look at it, it seems a much more complicated issue. RACHEL: Okay, you guys, I'm going to jump in. This is Rachel. Because this conversation is interesting and it is touching on some of the questions we have, and we do have so many questions and not much time. So if you guys will allow me, I'd like to start posing some of the questions. SALLY: Sure. RACHEL: First I just want to let people know that a number of you have sent in questions about international flights, quarantines, Hawaii, transportation at the airports, cruises, airlines. They are fabulous questions and I am holding them and we will address them during the next Web cast. Okay? All right, first I'm going to pose to you guys -- I'm going to give you a bunch of situations that have come up and, Sally, these might really be for you, legal issues about service animals in some different specific environments. So I'm going to throw out all the environments to you and then if you can't remember them all as you answer, let me know. Sally. SALLY: Okay, you can count on that happening. RACHEL: One has to do with a grocery store, and actually let me come back to the grocery store. One has to do with a dialysis center. Are service animals permitted into a dialysis delivery room, and are there other things that are important to know about service animals in dialysis centers. One has to do about college. There is somebody who has a service animal, does not require any other accommodations, and yet is being forced to register with the office of students with disabilities in order to be able to use her service animal and looks like she's being excluded from classes. So that's college. A third situation is an ambulance. May the service animals ride in the ambulance? And there are all kinds of details and variations on that one. We do have a number -- the last situation has to do with prison. I guess some of the specific questions are about basically taking care of the animal if it's the responsibility of the person with the disability to take care of the animal, how can they do that in prison? You know, must they be accompanied to let the dog go outside, things like that. So just to review, we have dialysis, college, ambulance and prison. SALLY: Okay. AARON: Those are tough. Sally, you should take all those. SALLY: Thank you ever so much. Feel free to jump in though, any of you fellows. The dialysis -- I think the answer is probably 99 times out of 100 going to be yes. And let me tell you my twisted logic for that. Because I'm aware of a lot of chemotherapy programs where they bring in comfort animals while people are getting therapy. And, to me, I'm assuming that we're talking about sort of traditional dialysis and so unless the dialysis place -- provider can show that there is that issue of that direct threat, then I think that the answer is, yes, they need to allow a service animal in there. And, again, it's going to depend on the nature of the threat and I guess my first question that I usually ask is why? Why are they saying no? But I would think that, you know, absent my complete knowledge on the subject of dialysis, my assumption is that unless there is a direct threat issue relating to sterile environments or some other issue that's been raised, I would say that they've clearly been covered and I think that they would need to modify that policy to allow a service animal. RACHEL: Okay. All right, let's move on to the next one. SALLY: College, forced to register with the office of disabilities -- that was the issue in someone that uses a service dog. RACHEL: Uh-huh. SALLY: I don't -- I'm having trouble making the connection of why one would lead to the other. ED: I think it's like having to register your wheelchair. SALLY: Well, you know, that's what I was thinking. ED: It makes no sense at all. And by the way, it's a related question, Sally, I don't know if you got any of these. Should we notify a restaurant or a hotel or an airline that we will be arriving with our assistance dogs, and that becomes an interesting one because of course the law does not require us. We don't do it, but some people feel to lessen that -- where the rubber meets the -- as they say, to lessen the potential problem of access denial they're told that. Now, here is a case for us very recently. We were in Atlanta and we had to get to the airport and needed to be picked up by a taxi at a friend's home. So it wasn't a matter of getting a taxi easily. We told them we had guide dogs. One company refused to take us. We filed a complaint. Another one came along and took us. We were worried, and this is the reality of working with the dogs, that we had a plane to catch and if we ran into an access denial taxi incident, that we would be missing our flight. Now, it's something we almost never do, but in that case we did. SALLY: I'll tell you, you're preaching to the choir on that one. There is no question that -- and I don't yet use a service animal, but I probably will in time. ED: Oh, good. SALLY: But, I have run into that sort of that same -- cabs seem to be just some piece of work. But I think the issue of when do you disclose and when do you not? There are times that I will choose to because I don't -- I want them to know up front so I know I'm not going to get stuck in the lurch and then there are times that I don't and I think it's a real personal thing. I know when I hail cabs on the street, I always will get somebody that is at least looks like they don't have a disability. I sort of hide around the corner or behind a mailbox somewhere. They will stop the cab and get the door open and then I bolt to try to get in. But to me -- when I call somebody, at least you know who the violator is. When you're trying to catch a cab on the street, it's hard enough for me, but if you don't have vision, you don't know who is discriminating against you. ED: by the way, I developed the same tactic in New York City. SALLY: I think disclosure is a totally personal issue. RACHEL: I'm just going to keep moving us along. SALLY: Ambulance. RACHEL: We have 15 minutes. I just want to repeat though the answer that you had for the person in college that the idea of having accommodations is separate from the idea of having a modification in the policy to allow service animal in. SALLY: Absolutely. And one other thing to that. There is -- let's say that this is -- well, actually it's in the Title II language as well, whether it's a private or publicly funded college, there is also language in the statute and the regulations that do not -- that clearly say someone with a disability is not required to accept a benefit or an accommodation that they do not want. So I just don't see the connection and unless, you know -- I just don't see the connection. ED: Very important, just a quick comment. That's one reason I don't sit up front on our buses. RACHEL: I recommend to the person who sent in the college question, if you have follow-up questions, please E-mail us and that way we can get in touch with you and do some specific follow through. Okay, prisons. SALLY: Prisons are very difficult for a couple of reasons. One is if we're talking truly prisons and not holding tanks, and this is a very common issue, believe it or not. We talked about the great equality, you know, we folks with disability have the same chance of getting thrown in the pokey as anyone else. The issue is prisons -- let's assume it's relatively long-term incarceration. More than a couple of hours or a day. You need to look at a couple of things. One is what kind of prison is it? If it's club fed where people can literally walk inside and outside all the time, it should never be an issue. That inmate should be able to very easily care for and provide supervision for that animal. The issue of other sort of higher level prisons is very difficult. One is what is the living environment and are people allowed -- I know the question was, would an inmate have to be accompanied if that inmate is taking the animal out to be relieved. In a lot of cases, absolutely that prisoner or inmate will have to be accompanied because it's a security issue. The prison can use legitimate security issues and apply the same standard of mobility -- independent mobility to somebody with a disability as all of their other inmates. If all of the other inmates are allowed to go out without having somebody go with them, then the mere fact that somebody uses a service animal or an assistance dog -- if that triggers added attention and added security, that would be a violation because that's inconsistent treatment. But in terms of who provides the food -- and I know it sounds like a stupid question, but it's huge, and I don't know that we're settled on that at this point. AARON: What about veterinary care? I mean, that's another one. SALLY: Right. I think that -- I'll tell you, I don't know the answer but I'm going to take a guess. I think that more than routine care, I think that that still falls to the individual with the disability to figure out or to pay for or it may be, you know, work in the library three extra hours a week or something. I'm not real clear on that one. They cannot say that just because somebody is incarcerated and is totally in our control they no longer need that animal. That is not true. They can't just make that a blanket argument. It's a very difficult issue because when someone is in jail -- I mean, they don't have a source of income. And so how do you continue with the maintenance of that animal? I think -- I don't know that you can use the same argument in terms of -- maybe you could try -- in terms of health care benefits and if I get arrested and get thrown in the clink some day, are they required to replace my wheelchair tires or maintenance. And I think you may be able to make some analogy like that. But they can't say because you're in our total control you no longer need the animal. RACHEL: Okay. Well, that's helpful for what we know to date and maybe this is something that will be addressed for the court. Can we move to the ambulance question? SALLY: Yes, that's a hard question, too. And we've gotten a number of complaints over the years. I think that generally -- I think that the EMT's or the ambulance provider needs to look at what kind of service is being provided. If it's a transport and we know that a lot of times ambulances are used simply for a planned transport, I think there is no excuse for saying no, the animal stays out. If the individual is having a really significant health event or an injury, there may not be room. There may be a very clear direct threat to the health and safety of others, including the person who is being transported in an emergency situation that I think it would be absolutely legitimate to keep the animal out of the ambulance. But I think you need to look at -- you know, I mean we can't just say ambulance because ambulance means sort of, you know, the low level, no sirens on transport or some horrific injury from a car accident where people are working feverishly. I think you need to look at in what context is that ambulance service being provided. And that probably sounds like I'm skirting the issue, but you can't make a blanket rule. If somebody is in critical condition and it's a life threatening thing and there are two people in the ambulance trying to care for that person, then it may be absolutely -- it probably is absolutely legitimate to remove the animal from the ambulance in that circumstance. They do need to make an effort to transport that animal. It may be in a following police car. Most of the time it's not just an ambulance that goes out anymore, it is an ambulance and 27 fire trucks. They need to make an effort to transport that animal to the hospital until they notify someone and someone can come and get the animal or be with the animal. I don't think they just can say we're going to pick you up, especially if it's somebody on the street, you know, with an accident. They need to make -- I think they would need to make an effort to transport that animal to some location. RACHEL: Okay. That actually was the follow-up question. Okay, let me pick a -- all right, I have a whole bunch of questions having to do with allergies and cleanliness. I also just want to let you guys know that we have a huge category of collection of questions that have to do with the different types of animals. There is a lot of interest in psychiatric, seizure, comfort, emotional support, et cetera -- so let's start -- and there are more, too, but let's see if we can address this with allergies and cleanliness and I want to let everybody who is listening know that we certainly cannot get to all the questions today. We're thrilled that you have all these questions, and we will send out an E-mail, probably tomorrow, and let people know what we're going to do with the remainder of the questions. We will either have an additional Web cast to answer these questions or we may host something that has the answers to all of these questions, but we will figure that out and we will let you know. If you are not on our E-mail list, please send us an E-mail now so that we can get you on that list and let you know what's going to happen so that all these questions do eventually get answered. Okay, finish with the commercial, let me give you guys the gist of the allergy questions and let you have at it. What happens -- a lot of it is if a dog or some sort of animal presents a conflict with somebody who has allergies that might be in a fragrance free conference because of people who have allergies or multiple chemical sensitivity, environmental illness, there are questions about what if an animal is just not clean and well groomed, then can the animal be excluded? There are questions about what happens if in a Title I, so an employment setting, somebody uses a service animal and somebody else in the office has an allergy to the animal. How do we handle that? ED: Let me grab that last one because there is a classic case on this. This is Ed again. The classic case on that in which actually our public relations director, Wilson Holly, worked for the president's committee at that time on employment of people with disabilities and he had a service dog. He was I think at that point the third person in the pool of employees to have a service dog. And there was another member of staff who said that two was enough, she was extremely allergic. Had in fact a documented allergy. Now, that's a big issue, this question of documented allergy versus sort of claimed allergies. That's an important legal issue I guess. But there was no question, both of them had documented disabilities and eventually the Department of Labor and EEOC came in on the case and said to the president's committee, you have to make reasonable accommodation for both employees. So what they did -- this is a very specific case -- whenever Wilson was going to go into the area near where the woman's desk was located, he would indicate -- they put in a separate bell. He would indicate or alert her by a flashing thing that he was coming by and she could vacate the area or whatever it was. When she was coming near his area, she would communicate with him that she was going to be in his vicinity, and if he wasn't around, then everything was fine. If not, then she would stay out at that point. The notion we'll get back to is a lot of these marginal test cases, full, reasonableness is the notion of what goes on and the question of people's rights with different disabilities infringing upon other people's rights is a very important one that has to be looked at in a reasonable and case-by-case basis and some accommodation worked out for both elements, but the notion that the service dog partner, in this case, or an assistance dog partner in general cases, should be the one not to be accommodated is, as I understand it, against the federal law. Sally, would you care to comment? SALLY: Sure. I think -- first I really do agree that we just don't want to go down a road of pitting one disability against another and one trumping another. I think that the issue of accommodation, as with anything, especially in an employment context where it's a long-term relationship and you have an opportunity to really establish a good dialogue and work cooperatively to meet both party's needs. I think it's really important, and it may very well be that there are times that each party is going to be inconvenienced for lack of a better word. I know that was a bad word to use. We have a very similar instance here where one of our folks is deathly allergic to any kind of dog dander and apparently cat dander, too, and I heard that was unusual that it was both. But when there are meetings, what everybody worked out very amicably is that the individual that is so allergic stays in her office - - and we have the luxury of having two sides of a hallway, so there is a space -- participates by speaker phone. And the person who uses the service animal sits in with the regular meeting and the individual that is allergic -- we've worked it out that way and I think it is its reasonableness. I think there are some folks who are just phenomenally allergic, and I use allergic in a really severe term, that it rises to a level of disability. I have allergies in the springtime. That level of allergy will not rise to the level of disability legally but I think some people can become so impaired with a variety of allergies to natural substances or toxins and things like that that they do rise to the level of disability, but I think the cooperative thing is that you -- you need to work out something that resolves it for both people and if the onus isn't solely on one person. Because then I think you do set up a very bad situation that can deteriorate rapidly and I think that the very nature and the underlying principle of the ADA is that it encouraging conversation and joint, you know, solutions to problems and to issues. And the ADA encourages that and that is why the onus of responsibility continually shifts back and forth and I think that, you know, if -- I mean one of the big things is, you know -- I'm not going to talk. I was just going to raise an issue with detective warnings, but something that works very well as an accommodation for one person may actually make another person with a different kind of disability -- their life more difficult. So we have to figure a middle ground that keeps everybody safe and healthy, but also doesn't trump one individual's right over another individual's right. RACHEL: Okay. All right, I think unfortunately our time is up, and I feel like you guys have done -- Sally, Ed and Aaron, you guys have done a great job of laying the foundation for the legal issues surrounding service animals. Apparently there are a lot of questions and people are very interested in how this applies to specific situations, and we've been able to address some of those and as I said before, we will make an effort to answer all of these questions. I will make sure that an E-mail goes out to people letting them know what the follow-up will be. It will also be posted on our Web site where you guys were able to get to today's Web cast. And don't forget, we will still have the May 12th Web cast that goes into housing and transportation, more in depth. So, again, thank you so much, Sally and Ed and Aaron. You guys have managed to get a lot of information into a short period of time, and are getting a phenomenal response. So thank you very much. SALLY: You're very welcome. Thank you for having us. ED: Thank you for having us. Wonderful. RACHEL: And just to let people know as we sign off that I hope you -- I see you've gotten a lot from today's Web cast. This Web cast will be archived so that means that you can come back to our Web site. You can listen to it again. You can also see a transcript that will be available so you can read through what was said. And if you have outstanding questions, please do go ahead and continue to E-mail those in and we will work them into our plans. You also may call us if you are in our region, which includes Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma. You can use our toll free hotline and that is 800-949-4232. If you are outside our region and use that 800 number, you will be connected to another ADA education center. If you would like to reach our office specifically, you can call us at (713)-520-0232. And last, but not least, I would like to acknowledge NIDRR, a part of the U.S. Department of Education who funds the Disability Law Resource Project, and that's where Aaron and I are based and we are your sponsor for today's program, and I also want to thank others who have made today possible here at our office, there is Marj Gordon, Sharon Finney, who has been keeping up with all your questions, Dawn Heinsohn, Vinh Nguyen and also from our team is Rob Dickehuth as well as Marie Bryant, our realtime captioner, who was challenged today and rose to the challenge as she always does. So again. Thank you to the presenters and I'm glad you all tuned in today and we look forward to continuing our conversation together. Have a great afternoon everyone.