Claims that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development updated a policy so landlords would no longer have to provide "reasonable accommodations" for tenants with an emotional support animal circulated online late May 2026.
Social media posts claimed the administration of President Donald Trump was "tightening the definition" of what qualifies as an assistance animal and removing untrained "emotional support animals" from consideration for "reasonable accommodations" under the Fair Housing Act.
The claim gained popularity following a May 22, 2026, report from The New York Times that said the newspaper had acquired an internal HUD memo explaining the change.
The Fair Housing Act, signed into law by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 11, 1968, effectively barred landlords from discriminating against tenants based on factors such as race, sex or disabilities.
The act states that "accommodations may be necessary to afford [a disabled individual] equal opportunity to use and enjoy [the] dwelling," including waiving pet fees or providing an exception to a "no pets" rule.
The popularity of the online rumor resulted in numerous emails to Snopes asking us to verify these claims.
In sum, the claim was true.
Craig Trainor, HUD's assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, told Snopes via email:
HUD's prior guidance on emotional support animals (ESAs) led to immense confusion, appeared to impose obligations on housing providers in violation of federal law, and facilitated fraudulent ESA claims that diverted our dedicated staff away from helping disabled Americans in need. By focusing our enforcement resources on helping our brave veterans and all Americans with dedicated, trained ESAs and assistance animals—rather than investigating dubious accommodation requests for bearded dragons and roosters—we will swiftly deliver for disabled Americans in need of reasonable accommodations under the Fair Housing Act.
The Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, a civil rights advocacy group, shared a PDF of the document, embedded below. HUD confirmed to Snopes via email that the published memo was authentic.
The memo says the department "will use the training component of the ADA's definition for service animals to assess animal-related reasonable accommodation complaints under the Fair Housing Act."
The Americans with Disabilities Act defined a service animal as:
Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties.
The ADA also stated that dogs that only provide "comfort or emotional support" do not qualify.
Though the HUD memo says "the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of this definition," that doesn't necessarily mean that assistance animals that provide emotional support services would be denied outright.
United Disabilities Services, a nonprofit organization aimed at "helping seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities lead more independent and fulfilling lives," explained that "psychiatric service dogs are the main type of service dog" for post-traumatic stress disorder and differ from so-called emotional support animals because they are subject to "extensive training" and are not legally considered pets.
As of this writing, HUD itself defines assistance animals as those that "do work, perform tasks, provide assistance, and/or provide therapeutic emotional support for individuals with disabilities."
Based on the language of the memo, it appears the stated purpose for the change is to filter out bogus filings by pet owners trying to have their pets certified as service animals, rather than an intent to deny emotional support animals full stop.
Whether the new policy will be implemented as stated remains to be seen, but a lawyer previously employed by HUD told the Times that the change would affect "many tenants who rely on assistance animals to alleviate psychiatric or mental disabilities" and the new rule could potentially "dismiss or shelve thousands of appeals for disability accommodations" — the opposite of the stated purpose.
While HUD said the purpose of the change is merely to remove untrained emotional support animals from its definition, it's notable that the HUD website's entire page about assistance animals, archived by the Wayback Machine as recently as May 23, 2026, was removed.
As of this writing, visiting the URL for the assistance animals page redirected to a 403 error and then reloaded the home page.