SPEAKER: Hello, welcome to Ask About the ADA, the podcast where we answer your questions about the Americans with Disabilities Act and try to tackle issues that come in to us here at the Northeast ADA Center. Hopefully, you'll find a little bit of information today that's going to be useful to you.
We're going to talk about one of the most popular subjects or most popular topics that we hear about here at the center. It has to do with service animals. And we'll look at a situation sort of the everyday variety and one situation when things are far from typical.
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Let's take our first question from the more unusual circumstance. Are service animals permitted in disaster shelters? And unfortunately, of course, in hurricane season, as well as other natural disasters and other situations that come up, people do have to relocate to emergency shelters at times. And so, often, people are curious about what their rights are in terms of bringing a service animal with them and what's going to happen when they do.
Remember, that disaster shelters are going to be covered either by Title II of the ADA that deals with state and local government or with Title III, which deals with public accommodations. And those are businesses and nonprofits covered by the ADA. In those circumstances, service animals are a form of what's known as reasonable modification, often, reasonable modification of policy, practice, or procedure.
And just as in non-emergency settings, service animals must be permitted where the public is generally allowed to go. So let's say we have the service animal come with its handler to the shelter door. And the shelter workers have questions about is this a service animal or not. Well, just like any other covered entity under Title II or III, a shelter's workers can ask two questions.
Is this animal a service animal needed because of a disability? And what task has the animal been trained to perform? Keep in mind, a service animal has a specific definition under the Department of Justice regulations, which cover Title II and III. A service animal is a dog that has been individually trained to perform a specific task for a person with a disability.
Now there is the possible exception of a miniature horse. But in general terms, it will have to be a dog. Now once those two questions have been answered that it is a dog that is needed because of a disability and it has been trained to perform a task, the person must be permitted to bring the service animal into the shelter with them.
Now that being said, the handler is responsible to make sure that, one, the animal behaves appropriately and conducts itself appropriately and, two, that the handler takes care of the needs of the service animal. It's not the responsibility of the shelter or the organization running the shelter to care for the animal. So again, the handler must be responsible for the animal and its needs.
Here at the Northeast ADA, we have a fact sheet about this that you might find helpful if you happen to be someone who is involved in disaster relief. The fact sheet is key facts about service animals for disaster shelter workers. And we'll put the link in the podcast description.
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Now let's look at our second question. And again, it's more about the every day this one. Can my service animal sit in my shopping cart or up on restaurant seating with me. The answer here is generally no. Places like shopping carts or seats at restaurants are designated for customers, not their service animals. So a service animal does need to remain on the floor.
Now there are particular circumstances where an animal may need to be near a person. For example, if a dog is a diabetes service animal that might detect changes in blood sugar of its owner, it may need to be on a pack close to the owner or handler's body. And in that case, the animal may be in somewhat of an unusual position. However, it should not be on restaurant seats or in shopping carts as a general rule. So it's clear that there is a separation for where people are meant to be versus where animals are meant to be.
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As I said, we covered a lot of information that we often get asked about here at the Northeast ADA center. Service animals are reasonable modifications under the ADA and often get a lot of attention from the public because people love animals. People love dogs. And certainly, if you have a question about service animals or anything else about the Americans with Disabilities Act, please don't hesitate to reach out to us and contact us.
So you can find us at 1-800-949-4232 if you live in New York, New Jersey, or Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands. If you're outside of that area, you can contact that number, and your phone call will be routed based on the area code where you're calling from. You can always visit us on the web, northeastada.org and contact us through our website and also follow us on social media as well.
Thanks, again, to Grace Fairchild, our producer and editor for the podcast. Thank you as well to Peter Quinn of the Yang Tan Institute who does our final edits. And thank you all for being apart of the conversation and joining me today on the podcast.
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