2026-09-12 · Maryland · Regulation

What happened. HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity issued an internal enforcement memorandum on 22 May 2026, effective immediately, telling its own staff that on animal-related reasonable-accommodation complaints the office “will find reasonable cause and recommend charges only for those cases involving animals trained to provide disability-related assistance.”¹

The memorandum, from Assistant Secretary Craig W. Trainor to headquarters staff, the Office of Enforcement and regional directors, states that FHEO “will use the training component of the ADA's definition for service animals,” and that “the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks.” It reconfirms that the earlier guidance notices FHEO-2013-01 and FHEO-2020-01 were rescinded on 17 September 2025.¹

What it is, and what it is not

This is the distinction that decides whether it matters to a Maryland board, and it is not a small one.

It is an enforcement-priority memorandum. It directs how a federal agency will exercise its charging discretion. It is not a regulation, it did not go through rulemaking, and it does not change the Fair Housing Act. The Act's reasonable-accommodation duty at 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B) is unaltered, and so is 24 C.F.R. § 100.204.

The consequence is a gap between enforcement and liability. An accommodation request that HUD will no longer charge on can still be the basis of:

• a private federal suit under the Fair Housing Act, brought by the resident rather than the government;
• a Maryland state-law claim, enforced through the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, which the memorandum does not purport to touch;
• a Section 504 or ADA complaint — the memorandum expressly says it does not address those against housing providers.

The memorandum notes that more than 20 percent of FHEO's fair-housing complaints involve untrained emotional-support animals, which is the volume argument behind it.

1. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity — Memorandum from Assistant Secretary Craig W. Trainor, Enforcement Guidance: Assessing Requests for the Use of an Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation Under the Fair Housing Act, 22 May 2026 ↩
2. COMAR Title 02, Subtitle 01 — new Chapter 02.01.11, Abusive Practices, effective 6 July 2026 (53:13 Md. R. 586), including the "reasonable reliance" limb ↩