HUD will no longer charge HOAs over untrained support animals — and Georgia has no state backstop
HUD will no longer charge HOAs over untrained support animals — and Georgia has no state backstop
2026-09-10 · Georgia · Regulation
What happened. The federal agency that has driven assistance-animal practice in community associations for a decade has narrowed what it will enforce, and Georgia has no state law filling the gap.
On 22 May 2026, Craig W. Trainor, HUD's Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, issued enforcement guidance addressed to FHEO headquarters, enforcement staff and regional directors.1
The operative sentence
“Effective immediately, for complaints related to animal-related reasonable accommodations, FHEO will find reasonable cause and recommend charges only for those cases involving animals trained to provide disability-related assistance.”
That is a distinction between a trained assistance animal and an untrained emotional support animal — the distinction the Americans with Disabilities Act draws for public accommodations, and one the Fair Housing Act has not historically drawn for housing.
How the guidance justifies it
The memo grounds the change in Executive Order 14219, 90 Fed. Reg. 10583 (19 Feb. 2025), directing agencies to de-prioritise enforcement “based on anything other than the best reading of a statute.” It argues the 2020 notice “had the effect of imposing categorical fair housing obligations on housing providers without comporting with the notice and comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. This is reason alone to rescind the guidance.”
The timeline, which is easy to get wrong
Two HUD notices governed this area: FHEO Notice 2013-01 (25 April 2013) and FHEO Notice 2020-01 (28 January 2020). Both were rescinded effective 17 September 2025; the May 2026 memo, at footnote 25, says it “reconfirms those recissions.”
HUD published the formal Notification of Withdrawal of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Guidance Documents in the Federal Register on 6 April 2026 (FR doc 2026-06624, 91 FR 17291-17292), listing both animal notices among a wider withdrawal that also covered limited English proficiency, criminal-records tenant screening, source-of-income testing, and marketing and advertising.2
What the memo expressly does not do
Three limits are stated in the document itself, and they matter more than the headline:
- It does not repeal the Fair Housing Act. The statute is unchanged; this is guidance about enforcement priorities.
- It “does not address how the Department will process complaints against housing providers under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
- “Nothing in this enforcement guidance affects the rights of parties to seek redress through a private action in court” — and the FHA's private right of action under § 3613(a)(1)(A) carries a two-year window.
HUD says it intends to conduct notice-and-comment rulemaking on animal-related accommodations, aiming to harmonise its regulations with the ADA's. No proposed rule and no comment deadline has issued that we could find as of early September 2026.
Why this lands harder in Georgia than in some states
Because Georgia has no state statute broadening assistance-animal protection beyond the Fair Housing Act. States such as California and Massachusetts have their own housing-discrimination statutes and enforcement agencies that operate independently of HUD's priorities. Georgia does not.
So for a Georgia condominium or HOA resident with an untrained emotional support animal, the practical position after 22 May 2026 is: a private lawsuit, or nothing. The administrative complaint route that most residents used — free, no lawyer needed — will not produce a cause finding.
Our sweep of Georgia appellate decisions for 2025-2026 found no Georgia state-court assistance-animal or reasonable-accommodation decision in the period. The controlling authority for Georgia associations remains Bhogaita v. Altamonte Heights Condo Ass'n, 765 F.3d 1277 (11th Cir. 2014), now supplemented by Watts v. Joggers Run Property Owners Association, No. 22-13763 (11th Cir. 7 Apr. 2025), which held § 3604(b) reaches the privileges and services an HOA contract creates.3
What this does not mean for a Georgia board
This is the part where associations get into trouble, and it is worth being blunt.
The law did not change. An enforcement-priority memo is not an amendment to the Fair Housing Act. An association that starts refusing accommodation requests categorically because “HUD does not enforce that anymore” has misunderstood what it read.
Private plaintiffs are not bound by HUD's priorities. A Georgia resident with counsel can file in federal court within two years and litigate the accommodation question on the merits, where the 2013 and 2020 notices' reasoning may still persuade a judge even though the notices are withdrawn.
Section 504 and the ADA are untouched. Associations receiving federal financial assistance, and those whose facilities function as places of public accommodation, have separate obligations the memo expressly declines to address.
Case-by-case evaluation remains the defensible practice. The memo permits enforcement discretion; it does not supply a safe harbour for refusing to engage with a request.
What a Georgia board may reasonably do
Within the framework as it now stands:
- Ask for the two permitted things where the disability and the need are not obvious: confirmation of a disability, and confirmation of the disability-related need for the animal. Nothing in the withdrawal changes the limits on what may be requested.
- Enforce breed and weight limits against untrained animals more confidently than before — but document the individualised assessment that led there.
- Distinguish trained assistance animals clearly in your policy. The memo's line is training, and a policy that tracks it is a policy aligned with current federal enforcement.
- Keep the records. Every accommodation decision should be documented as an individual determination. That record is the defence in a private suit, where HUD's priorities are irrelevant.
The Georgia statute that arrives in January, and what it does here
Georgia's new Chapter 43-17A says nothing about animals. But two provisions touch this area obliquely from 1 January 2027.
Section 43-17A-7(12) gives owners the right to “challenge discriminatory practices by an owners' association as authorized by the laws of this state or federal law” — which adds no cause of action, but points at the Fair Housing Act.
More usefully, § 43-17A-5 lets any person residing in the development complain to the Secretary of State within 180 days about the association's action or inaction. That is a Georgia forum, not a fair-housing forum, and a hearing officer has no power to find a Fair Housing Act violation. But an owner refused an accommodation now has somewhere in Georgia to take the complaint, at a moment when the federal administrative route has narrowed.4
What to watch next
HUD's promised rulemaking. If a proposed rule appears harmonising the FHA's treatment of assistance animals with the ADA's, that would be a genuine legal change rather than an enforcement posture — and it would be subject to comment, and to challenge. Until then, Georgia associations are operating in a gap between a statute that has not changed and an agency that has stopped enforcing part of it.
Related Georgia HOA Topics
- HUD FHEO enforcement guidance on animal-related reasonable accommodations, 22 May 2026 ↩
- Notification of Withdrawal of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Guidance Documents, 91 FR 17291 (6 Apr. 2026) ↩
- Watts v. Joggers Run Property Owners Association, Inc., No. 22-13763 (11th Cir. 7 Apr. 2025) — published opinion ↩
- Senate Bill 406, as passed (26 LC 49 2879S) — signed copy, Office of the Governor ↩
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