Sydney Sheets is a college student who takes Halo, her service animal, everywhere. When it comes to Halo going into class with her, a few people have issues with it, even though it is not against the law. The Americans with Disabilities Act covers service animals. Plus, the federal housing act says that, even though emotional support animals have no rights in classrooms, they do have rights in regards to housing and dorms.
But knowing which animal is a service animal and which one isn’t is a big problem due to the rapid increase of animals on school campuses.“We’re going to need to have better training requirements for animals,” says Dr. Phyllis Erdman. She continued, “We’re going to have to have offices in place on universities that can identify the service animals, emotional support animals, clearly help them determine which is which.”
Clearly, there are people taking advantage of this system and sneaking in emotional support animals when they don’t need them for their emotional well-being. According to Karin Sheets, mother of Sydney, people who bring in emotional support animals when they have no need for them are causing harm to people with a mental need for these animals.
According to Erdman, staff education and policy updates are vital to weed out these people. This problem is not only causing a stir in college campuses.
Even courtrooms are facing similar problems as well, and judges are having a tough time determining whether a case can be impacted by the presence of emotional support animals since they can potentially make the jury biased.