Assistance Animals vs. Pets: What Ohio Landlords Can (and Can’t) Require

HUD changed how it enforces the Fair Housing Act on assistance animals. Ohio’s civil rights rule still says something different, and it is still on the books. Here is where that leaves Columbus rental owners as of September 2026.

The short answer for an Ohio owner: a trained service animal is an accommodation, not a pet, and pet fees do not apply to one. An emotional support animal now sits in contested territory, because HUD stopped enforcing on untrained ESAs in May 2026 while Ohio’s own civil rights rule, which protects any animal that aids a person with a disability and bars extra charges for one, did not change. Until the Ohio Civil Rights Commission says how it reads that gap, the defensible move is an individualized, documented decision on each request rather than a blanket policy in either direction.

This article is informational and current as of September 2026. It is not legal advice. These requests turn on facts specific to one resident and one property, and the federal framework is unusually fluid right now. Talk to an Ohio attorney before acting on an actual request.

 

What changed at HUD, and what did not

Three federal actions in eighteen months, not one. The sequence matters, because most secondhand summaries compress them and get the date wrong.

On September 17, 2025, HUD withdrew eight fair housing guidance documents, among them FHEO Notice 2020-01, the framework providers had used since January 2020 to evaluate assistance animal requests. On April 6, 2026, a Federal Register notice formalized that withdrawal, which is where the stray “April 2026” date comes from. Then on May 22, 2026, Craig Trainor, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, issued an enforcement memorandum to FHEO headquarters, enforcement staff, and regional directors. That memo is the substantive change.

Its operative sentence: FHEO “will find reasonable cause for failure to provide a reasonable accommodation involving the waiver of a pet policy only where the animal has been individually trained to perform work or perform tasks directly related to the complainant’s disability.” The memo adds that “the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks.” HUD’s stated reasoning, as reported by Multifamily Dive: more than 20% of its fair housing complaints involved untrained ESAs, alongside a cottage industry of online certifications and registries.

HUD changed how it enforces federal law. It did not change what the Fair Housing Act says, and it did not change what Ohio requires.

A memo to enforcement staff is not a statute and not a regulation. The reasonable accommodation requirement lives at 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B), which bars refusing “to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services, when such accommodations may be necessary to afford such person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.” Congress has not amended that language and the regulations have not been rewritten. HUD announced an intent to take up rulemaking here, and as of September 2026 no replacement rule had been published.

Four things survived intact: the private right of action, which the memo expressly preserves, so a resident can skip HUD and sue; the existing case law, decided under the statute rather than the 2020 notice; Section 504, which the memo declines to address for federally assisted housing; and state and local fair housing law.

As of September 2026, no lawsuit challenging the May memo surfaced in reporting or legal commentary, and it has not been amended or reversed. It is in force for HUD’s own complaint intake, and it is doing what it says.

 

Service animal, emotional support animal, or pet

A service animal, under the ADA standard HUD borrowed, is a dog “trained to perform a task directly related to a person’s disability.” ADA.gov draws the line: “If the dog’s mere presence provides comfort, it is not a service animal under the ADA.” Where the task is not obvious, two questions are permitted: is the dog required because of a disability, and what work or task has it been trained to perform. Registration or certification cannot be demanded, the dog cannot be made to demonstrate the task, and the nature of the disability is off limits.

Two nuances get missed constantly. First, owner training counts: no accredited program, no certificate to produce, which is exactly why the online registry industry is a fiction. Fisher Phillips, writing on May 28, 2026, notes that “owner training can be sufficient under the new policy, as it is under the ADA.” Second, HUD did not adopt the ADA’s dogs-only limitation. Per Williams Edelstein Tucker, other species still count if trained.

An emotional support animal helps by being present. No task, no training. Under HUD’s current posture, waiving a pet policy for one is not presumptively required, and the blanket prohibition on charging pet fees is gone. Under Ohio’s rule the answer is murkier.

A pet has no disability connection and is governed entirely by the lease: pet rent, fees, breed and weight terms, screening. Under the RLPM program, approved pets carry damage coverage up to $4,000 starting in 2026, funded by a monthly pet administration fee the resident pays.

 

Does Ohio follow HUD? The rule most owners have not read

This is the question that decides the answer for a Columbus rental, and almost no landlord content addresses it. Ohio has its own fair housing statute. ORC 4112.02(H)(19) makes it unlawful to “refuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services when necessary to afford a person with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling unit.” That is a state obligation, and it does not depend on HUD’s enforcement priorities.

Underneath it sits the Ohio Civil Rights Commission’s own rule. Ohio Administrative Code 4112-5-07(C), effective April 11, 2023 and not up for five-year review until March 2028, reads:

“Every person with a disability who has an animal assistant or who obtains an animal assistant shall be entitled to keep the animal assistant on the premises purchased, leased, rented, assigned, or subleased by such person with a disability. He or she shall not be required to pay any extra charge for such animal assistant but shall be liable for damage done by the animal assistant to the premises.”

Now read the definition. OAC 4112-5-02(C), effective September 14, 2023: “‘Animal assistant’ means any animal which aids the persons with a disability.”

Any animal which aids. Not “individually trained to perform work or tasks.” On its face Ohio’s text is broader than the standard HUD adopted, and its no-extra-charge provision runs the opposite direction from HUD dropping its pet-fee prohibition.

Be careful how far that reads. The rule illustrates “animal assistant” with three examples: a dog alerting a person with a hearing impairment, a dog guiding a person with a visual impairment, a monkey retrieving items for a person with a mobility impairment. All three are task-trained. The text is broad, the examples are narrow, and OCRC has not resolved the gap. Whether Ohio’s rule reaches an untrained ESA is an open question, not a settled protection.

What makes this more than academic is where Columbus complaints land. The Ohio Civil Rights Commission is a HUD Fair Housing Assistance Program agency, certified as administering a law substantially equivalent to the Fair Housing Act, and HUD routinely refers complaints to such agencies for investigation and enforcement. OCRC is listed as Ohio’s state FHAP agency at 30 East Broad Street downtown. A Franklin County resident can end up before an agency applying Ohio’s “animal assistant” rule rather than HUD’s memo.

Ohio’s rule protects any animal that aids a person with a disability. The text does not use the word trained.

As of September 2026, OCRC had published no position on how the federal shift affects these complaints. That silence is a reason for caution, not comfort. Other state agencies have spoken: South Carolina’s Human Affairs Commission, also a FHAP agency, announced on August 5, 2026 that its protections are unaffected, putting it this way: “HUD has changed how it enforces federal law, not what South Carolina law requires.” Ohio has neither adopted nor rejected that reading. An owner charging an ESA pet fee in Gahanna or Grove City this fall is betting on how OCRC will read its own rule.

The city layer adds a forum, not a separate animal standard. Columbus City Code 2331 prohibits housing discrimination based on disability, with complaints going to the Columbus Community Relations Commission (614-645-1993). No Columbus or Franklin County ordinance specific to assistance animals surfaced in this research. The local code is a third door, alongside OCRC and federal court.

 

Where the ground is genuinely unsettled

Saying “here is the rule” would be easier. It would not be accurate. Four things are actively unresolved as of September 2026.

• Pet fees for ESAs. HUD dropped its prohibition. Ohio’s rule says an animal assistant carries no extra charge. Nobody has told Ohio landlords which controls.
• Documentation. HUD rescinded the 2020 framework and put nothing in its place. Fisher Phillips recommends letters from licensed providers with a real treatment relationship over generic online certificates: sound practice, but a law firm’s judgment rather than a published standard.
• Whether the ADA two-question script fits housing. Those questions were built for a business serving the public, asked at a door, in the moment. Writing in Multifamily Dive on August 31, 2026, Seyfarth Shaw’s John Egan lists this among the questions the memo left open.
• Verifying training. HUD conditions enforcement on whether an animal is individually trained, while the ADA framework it borrowed forbids demanding certification or a demonstration.

What still creates legal exposure in Columbus

The owners most likely to get sued over this in the next year are the ones who read the May memo as permission to say no faster.

Fisher Phillips is direct: “Automatically denying all ESA requests is still off limits, and disability discrimination is still illegal.” Egan agrees that “housing providers should not automatically deny all requests involving untrained ESAs.”

A blanket denial is the one response that carries risk under the old framework, the new one, and Ohio’s rule at once.

Four patterns carry real risk. The blanket denial, rejecting a class of requests without evaluating any. Non-response, which functions as a denial and looks worse in a file than a documented no, because it shows no process at all. Revoking an existing approval on the strength of a memo, without new facts about that animal. And retaliation: the Fair Housing Act separately prohibits coercing, intimidating, threatening, or interfering with someone exercising a fair housing right (42 U.S.C. § 3617), so a rent increase or non-renewal following a request invites a claim regardless of how the request was resolved.

Inconsistency is its own exposure: two similar Clintonville properties handling the same request differently create a comparison an investigator will notice. Roughly 3.5% of RLPM-managed rentals escalate to eviction, litigation, or significant dispute, and those are rarely the ones with a documented, uniformly applied process.

 

How to handle a request in 2026

1. Put the procedure in writing and use the same one at each property. Who receives requests, how they are logged, what happens next, how long it takes. That is what turns a series of judgment calls into a process you can describe to an investigator.

2. Take the request in whatever form it arrives, and log the date. A resident does not need a form or the words “reasonable accommodation.” A text message counts, and a timeline is the first thing a reviewer looks for.

3. Evaluate this request, not the category. Where the need is not obvious, ask about the disability-related need and what the animal is trained to do. Not a diagnosis, not medical records. If documentation is appropriate, ask for a letter from a licensed provider with a genuine treatment relationship rather than a downloaded registration.

4. Write down the decision and the reason, then consult an Ohio attorney before any denial. Not after. Given the gap between HUD’s memo and Ohio’s rule, denial is where a short call is cheap and a mistake is not. RLPM routes complex accommodation questions and court evictions the same way, to local counsel.

5. Keep operations normal afterward. Quarterly inspections and standard maintenance response document that nothing changed, provided they were already routine and did not begin with the request.

 

When can a landlord deny an assistance animal request?

Denial grounds exist. They are narrower than they sound, and they attach to the specific animal.

Under 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(9), nothing in the disability provisions “requires that a dwelling be made available to an individual whose tenancy would constitute a direct threat to the health or safety of other individuals or whose tenancy would result in substantial physical damage to the property of others.”

Ohio mirrors both grounds and adds a warning. OAC 4112-5-07(F) provides the same defense, then states that it “will be closely scrutinized” and that “speculative evidence of hazards to health and safety will not suffice.” That clause does a lot of work. A breed name, a weight, or an insurance carrier’s preference is speculative. A documented bite, a pattern of aggression toward other residents, or actual damage is evidence.

The ADA framework adds two behavioral grounds for removing an otherwise qualified animal: it is not housebroken, or it is out of control and the handler cannot control it.

What is not a denial ground: the possibility of damage. Ohio’s rule resolves that in the owner’s favor by making the resident “liable for damage done by the animal assistant to the premises.” Protecting that claim takes a documented move-in inspection, quarterly condition reports, and a move-out inspection with a real turn scope.

Damage is a bill the resident owes under Ohio’s rule. It is not a reason to deny the animal.

For the broader compliance picture these requests sit inside, see fair housing laws for Columbus landlords and tenant screening under Ohio fair housing rules.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Can an Ohio landlord charge a pet fee for an emotional support animal in 2026?
Unsettled. HUD dropped its blanket prohibition in the May 22, 2026 memo, but Ohio Administrative Code 4112-5-07(C) still says a person with a disability “shall not be required to pay any extra charge” for an animal assistant. Ask an Ohio attorney before charging one.

Does an assistance animal have to be professionally trained or certified?
No. The standard HUD adopted follows the ADA, where owner training is sufficient and registration or certification cannot be demanded. Online registries carry no legal weight in either direction.

What two questions can a landlord ask?
Where the need is not obvious: whether the animal is required because of a disability, and what work or task it has been trained to perform. Whether that ADA script fits a residential request is itself unresolved.

Has the Ohio Civil Rights Commission said whether it follows HUD’s new standard?
Not as of September 2026. OCRC had published no position, and its rule protecting an “animal assistant” remains in effect with no review scheduled before March 2028.

Can a request be denied because of the dog’s breed or size?
Breed and size alone are the kind of speculative grounds Ohio’s rule says “will not suffice.” Denial requires evidence about that specific animal, such as documented aggression or actual damage.

Should previously approved accommodations be revoked based on the HUD memo?
Revoking an approval granted under the prior framework, without new facts about the animal, is among the higher-risk moves available right now. Legal commentary since May 2026 has advised against it.

Sources & Suggested External Links

• HUD FHEO Enforcement Memorandum (May 22, 2026): the primary document, signed by Assistant Secretary Craig Trainor
• National Low Income Housing Coalition: HUD’s withdrawal of FHEO Notice 2020-01 and the April 6, 2026 Federal Register notice
• Ohio Administrative Code 4112-5-07: Ohio’s disability housing rule, including the animal assistant and direct threat provisions
• Ohio Administrative Code 4112-5-02: definition of “animal assistant”
• Ohio Revised Code 4112.02: state fair housing statute, reasonable accommodation at (H)(19)
• 42 U.S.C. § 3604: federal reasonable accommodation requirement and the direct threat provision
• ADA.gov: Service Animals: the trained-task standard and the two permitted questions
• Multifamily Dive (August 31, 2026): Seyfarth Shaw’s John Egan on remaining compliance risk
• Fisher Phillips (May 28, 2026): practical steps, including owner training and maintaining existing approvals
• Williams Edelstein Tucker (June 5, 2026): what the memo preserves, including Section 504 and state law
• Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund: critical analysis arguing the memo is an enforcement choice, not a change in law
• South Carolina Human Affairs Commission (August 5, 2026): a state FHAP agency confirming its own standard is unchanged
• IAOHRA FHAP agency directory: Ohio Civil Rights Commission listing
• City of Columbus Community Relations Commission: Columbus City Code 2331 protected classes and complaint process