What the notice says it does not do

This is the paragraph to build a board policy around, and it is unusually explicit:

“Any actions that do not comply with the text of the Fair Housing Act continue to be subject to enforcement by the Department. HUD encourages parties whose prior conduct may have been violative of the Fair Housing Act, while in conformance with the previous guidance and during the period in which that guidance was in effect, to take immediate actions to address any such potential violation… Notwithstanding an enforcement determination by HUD, the Fair Housing Act provides that complainants may file a civil action in an appropriate Federal district court or state court within two years after the occurrence or termination of the alleged discriminatory housing practice. Nothing in this memo affects the rights of parties to seek redress in the proper court.”

So: the statute stands, HUD's enforcement authority stands, and the two-year private limitations period stands. What is gone is the agency's published method for applying them.

What a board actually lost

FHEO 2020-01 contained the decision tree most managers and association counsel worked from: the screen for animals “commonly kept in households,” the treatment of internet-purchased emotional support animal letters, the separate analysis for unique animals, and the documentation a housing provider could and could not request.

Two things follow. A board can no longer cite FHEO 2020-01 as HUD's blessing of its process. And a resident can no longer wave it as HUD's command. The exposure is asymmetric, though: the association is the one making decisions that create liability, so losing the safe-harbour script while keeping the liability is a net increase in risk, not a relaxation.

What still binds a New Mexico association

The underlying federal duty is at 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B) and 24 CFR § 100.204 — the obligation to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services when necessary to afford a person with a disability equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling. Neither was touched.

Separately and independently, New Mexico's own Human Rights Act, Section 28-1-7 NMSA 1978, prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of disability under state law and is enforced through the state's Human Rights Bureau. A federal sub-regulatory withdrawal cannot narrow a state statute. A New Mexico association therefore faces the same state-law exposure it faced before September 2025, entirely unaffected by anything HUD did.

What to do with the pet policy now

The withdrawal is a documentation problem more than a policy problem. An association whose written accommodation procedure cites FHEO 2020-01 by name, or reproduces its decision tree as though quoting HUD, should stop attributing the procedure to HUD — the attribution is now false, and the procedure may or may not be defensible on its own terms.

The safer posture is the one the statute has always described: consider each request individually, on the facts, with a documented reason for the decision, and do not apply a blanket rule. That was sound before the guidance existed and it is sound now that it does not.