On May 22, 2026, HUD made changes to its stated enforcement position regarding emotional support animals and animal-related reasonable accommodation complaints under the Fair Housing Act.
By way of background, HUD previously issued guidance in 2013 and again in 2020, addressing assistance animals in housing, including emotional support animals. In September 2025, HUD rescinded those notices. HUD has now issued a May 22, 2026 Memorandum that permanently rescinds the 2020 Notice and sets forth a revised internal enforcement approach for HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. (“FHEO”) A copy of the Memorandum can be found by clicking here.
It is important to emphasize what the May 22, 2026 document is and is not.
The Memorandum is internal HUD guidance directed to FHEO Headquarters, enforcement staff, and regional directors. It is not formal guidance to housing providers, it is not a regulation, and it does not amend the Fair Housing Act or its implementing regulations. It does not change New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination or affect New Jersey case law. Rather, it describes how HUD’s enforcement staff should evaluate and prioritize certain complaints involving animal-related reasonable accommodation requests.
Under the Memorandum, HUD states that, going forward, FHEO will find reasonable cause for failure to provide a reasonable accommodation involving waiver of a pet policy only where the animal has been individually trained to perform work or tasks directly related to the complainant’s disability. HUD further states that requests involving animals trained to perform specific disability-related services are presumptively reasonable, but requests to waive pet policies for untrained emotional support animals are not. HUD also states that FHEO no longer expects housing providers to categorically extend accommodations for trained assistance animals to untrained emotional support animals.
HUD explains that this change is based on its current view that prior guidance did not provide sufficient clarity and that an industry has emerged to convert pets into emotional support animals. The memorandum also states that FHEO may use its enforcement discretion to prioritize cases involving trained assistance animals and to deploy enforcement resources accordingly.
There are several important caveats:
- The underlying Fair Housing Act and its regulations remain in effect. The statute and regulations have not been amended by this internal memorandum.
- Courts remain free to interpret the Fair Housing Act independently. A change in HUD’s enforcement position does not prevent courts from reaching their own conclusions in private litigation.
- The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, which enforces the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (“LAD”), has not issued any comment or direction indicating whether it will follow HUD’s internal enforcement approach. The LAD still remains in effect and is unchanged.
- Private lawsuits under the Fair Housing Act and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination remain possible, even if HUD changes its enforcement priorities.
The Memorandum also suggests that HUD intends to pursue regulations, rather than guidance, to address animal-related reasonable accommodation requests. HUD indicates that it intends to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking, with the stated goal of considering how housing providers should address these requests and harmonizing the applicable standards, to the maximum extent possible, with the ADA.
Finally, the Memorandum directs HUD Regional Directors to send all open emotional support animal cases to the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement and Programs for a case-by-case determination on the merits.
In short, HUD has announced a significant change in its internal enforcement approach to emotional support animal complaints. However, because this is an internal enforcement memorandum and not a change in the law, housing providers should continue to evaluate accommodation requests carefully and on a case-by-case basis, particularly where state law, local law, or private litigation risk may apply.