The assistance animal act already names you
The assistance animal act already names you
2026-09-15 · Pennsylvania · Legislation · Pending — not yet law
What is already the case. Pennsylvania has a statute specifically governing assistance-animal requests, and it names community associations. The Assistance and Service Animal Integrity Act, Act 118 of 2018, defines: "'Association.' The owners association established to operate a condominium, cooperative or planned community located in this Commonwealth."1
What would change. HB 2696 would amend that act's documentation, immunity and misrepresentation provisions and add a trained service dog card. It is not law — referred to the House Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee on 15 July 2026, no action since.1
The documentation rule as it stands
This is the provision boards most often get wrong, in both directions. Verbatim:
"A landlord or association that receives a request from a person to make an exception to the landlord's or association's policy prohibiting animals or limiting the size, weight, breed or number of animals … may require the person to produce documentation of the disability and disability-related need for the animal only if the disability or disability-related need is not readily apparent or known to the landlord or, in the case of an association, the executive board of the association."1
Two limits in one sentence. An association may ask for documentation — but only if the disability or the disability-related need is not readily apparent or already known. A blanket policy of demanding paperwork from every applicant does not comply.
The immunity
The other side of the bargain: "a landlord or association shall not be liable for injuries caused by a person's assistance animal or service animal permitted on the landlord's property or within property controlled by the association as a reasonable accommodation."1
An association that grants an accommodation is protected from liability for what the animal then does. That is a meaningful protection and it is the answer to the objection boards most often raise.
What a request actually requires of a board
The statute, read with the federal and state fair-housing framework, produces a fairly clear process:
- Treat it as an accommodation request, not a rule exception. The pet policy is not the operative framework; disability law is. A request need not use any particular words or form.
- Ask only the two permitted questions, and only when permitted. Whether the person has a disability, and whether there is a disability-related need for the animal — and documentation only where that is not readily apparent or already known to the board.
- Do not ask for a diagnosis. The statute permits documentation of the disability and the need. It does not entitle an association to medical records or a specific condition.
- Do not apply breed, size or weight limits. The section is expressly about exceptions to policies "limiting the size, weight, breed or number of animals." That is what the accommodation displaces.
- Do not charge a pet fee or deposit. An assistance animal is not a pet.
- Decide promptly and in writing. Delay is the most common way an association turns a manageable request into a complaint.
Conduct remains a legitimate ground. An animal that is out of control, or that poses a direct threat that cannot be reduced by another reasonable accommodation, is a different matter from the accommodation itself — and it must be assessed on that animal's actual behaviour rather than on its breed.
Why Pennsylvania boards misread this
Because the act's popular framing is about fraud. It is titled an "Integrity" act, it contains misrepresentation provisions, and it was promoted as a response to people passing off pets as assistance animals.
That framing leads boards to read it as authorising scrutiny. The operative text does something closer to the opposite: it constrains when documentation may be demanded, and it protects an association that grants an accommodation. An association that reads the statute as a licence to interrogate is exposed under exactly the law it thinks it is relying on.
The state-law point, which is now the important one
A Pennsylvania association's obligations here rest on state law as well as federal law, and the state side has recently expanded while the federal side is being narrowed.
The Pennsylvania Human Relations Act is enforced independently by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, and its housing provisions reach associations. Its regulations at 16 Pa. Code Chapter 45 were not amended in 2025 or 2026. Meanwhile HUD has an open supplemental rulemaking, published 10 August 2026 with comments due 9 October, continuing an effort to remove disparate-impact liability provisions.
Reasonable accommodation is not what that rulemaking addresses — it rests on different provisions. So a board watching federal fair-housing retrenchment and concluding that assistance-animal obligations have loosened would be wrong twice over: wrong about what the rulemaking covers, and wrong about Pennsylvania, where the PHRA applies regardless.
What the pending bill would add
HB 2696 renumbers and amends the documentation, immunity and misrepresentation provisions and adds a "trained service dog card."1 The prime sponsor is Rep. Steven Malagari, with bipartisan co-sponsorship including Rep. O'Neal.
A card scheme is worth watching carefully if it advances, because voluntary identification schemes have a way of becoming de facto requirements in the hands of housing providers. Nothing in federal or Pennsylvania law permits an association to require registration or certification of an assistance animal, and the existence of a card is no authority for a board to demand one.
It is also worth noting where the bill sits: the House Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, which handles animal legislation rather than housing. That routing is part of why association-sector attention has not found it.
What to watch next
The session ends 30 November 2026 with no carryover. A bill referred to committee in July 2026 dies then on any ordinary reading. Its predecessor from the 2023-2024 session, HB 2392, likewise went nowhere.
Until something changes, Act 118 of 2018 is the operative Pennsylvania statute and it has not been amended.
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