HUD rescinded the assistance-animal guidance boards have used for six years
HUD rescinded the assistance-animal guidance boards have used for six years
2026-09-15 · Montana · Regulation
What happened. The federal guidance Montana boards, managers and counsel have applied to assistance-animal requests since January 2020 is gone. What replaced it is an internal enforcement-priority memorandum — which is narrower than it will be reported to be.
The document
A memorandum dated May 22, 2026 from Craig W. Trainor, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, to FHEO headquarters staff, enforcement staff and regional directors, subject “Enforcement Guidance – Assessing Requests for the Use of an Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation Under the Fair Housing Act.”1
Trainor states: “I am permanently rescinding FHEO's 2020 notice regarding assistance animals” — FHEO-2020-01 of January 28, 2020 — with FHEO-2013-01 of April 25, 2013 also treated as superseded.
The stated reasons
The memorandum cites a February 19, 2025 presidential directive that agencies review enforcement activities and deprioritise enforcement not based on the best reading of a statute. HUD adds that the 2020 notice was issued without notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act, and that “an entire industry has emerged to convert pets into emotional support animals.”
The new standard
“Going forward, FHEO 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” — a service animal being one individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability, and “the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks.”
The operative instruction: “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.” Requests to waive pet policies for trained animals are “presumptively reasonable”; requests for untrained animals are not.
It relies on 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(2) and (f)(3)(B) and 24 C.F.R. § 100.204(b), and cites Vorchheimer v. Philadelphian Owners Ass'n, 903 F.3d 100 (3d Cir. 2018) and Henderson v. Five Properties LLC, 2025 WL 1951763 (E.D. La. July 16, 2025).
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Related Montana HOA Topics
- 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,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, May 22, 2026 ↩
- Senate Bill 149 (2025), enrolled bill — Chapter 360, Laws of 2025, preserving the Fair Housing Act, the ADA and Title 49, chapter 2 at subsection (9) ↩
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