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 Both were rescinded effective 17 September 2025; the May 2026 memo, at footnote 25, says it “reconfirms those recissions.”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.

1. HUD FHEO enforcement guidance on animal-related reasonable accommodations, 22 May 2026 ↩
2. Notification of Withdrawal of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Guidance Documents, 91 FR 17291 (6 Apr. 2026) ↩
3. Watts v. Joggers Run Property Owners Association, Inc., No. 22-13763 (11th Cir. 7 Apr. 2025) — published opinion ↩
4. Senate Bill 406, as passed (26 LC 49 2879S) — signed copy, Office of the Governor ↩