HUD Rescinded Its ESA Guidance. Here Is Exactly What Changed, and What Did Not

What Actually Changed

• The 2020 guidance is gone. FHEO-2020-01, the document that told landlords how to handle ESA requests, registries, fees, and breed rules, was rescinded September 17, 2025, and the May 2026 memo permanently reconfirms it (memo, at 25 n.25).
• Federal enforcement narrowed. In the memo's words, FHEO will find reasonable cause for a pet-policy waiver complaint only where the animal has been individually trained to perform work or tasks directly related to the complainant's disability. An untrained ESA no longer gets federal administrative enforcement behind it.
• One court had already gone this direction. The memo attaches a 2025 Louisiana federal decision that declined to follow the rescinded notices and upheld a pet fee applied to an ESA. Courts are not unanimous, and decades of earlier decisions recognized ESA accommodations; expect more litigation.

What Did not Change

• The statuteThe Fair Housing Act still requires reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities (42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B)). Guidance memos do not amend statutes, and the memo itself notes that complainants can pursue their own claims in court within two years.
• All 20 state ESA statutesCalifornia's AB 468, Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Iowa's 30-day rules, and the 15 other documentation statutes are state law, enforced by state agencies, and are untouched by a HUD memo. Several expressly ban pet fees for assistance animals. The state hub tracks each one.
• State fair housing agenciesStates with laws like New York's, which names the use of an animal as a reasonable accommodation in the statute itself, enforce on their own authority. State complaints did not weaken.
• Public housing's regulation24 C.F.R. § 5.303, an actual regulation, still exempts animals that assist or support persons with disabilities from HUD-assisted public housing pet rules (24 C.F.R. § 5.303).

What May Change Next: HUD's Stated Rulemaking Intent

The memo also signals the future. In its words, the Department intends to engage in notice and comment rulemaking regarding animal-related reasonable accommodations, with the aim of harmonizing its regulations, to the maximum extent possible, with those of the ADA (memo, Future Rulemaking section). The ADA recognizes only trained service animals, so a rule that fully harmonized the two would narrow federal ESA protections further. Three caveats: rulemaking takes years and requires public comment; no proposed rule exists yet; and under the Supreme Court's Loper Bright decision, which the memo itself relies on, courts rather than agencies decide what the Fair Housing Act means. What rulemaking cannot touch at all: the 20 states' own ESA statutes. This page updates the day a proposed rule appears.

What This Means in Practice

The center of gravity moved from federal guidance to state law and documentation quality:

1. Know your state before anything elseIn the 20 statute states your rights are written into state law, fees are often banned by statute, and the state agency enforces. In federal-floor states, the statute and courts still support accommodations, but expect more landlord pushback than before.
2. Make the documentation unimpeachableA letter that visibly complies with your state's statute, licensed professional, verifiable license details, waiting period met where required, gives a landlord no procedural angle. Weak documentation was always the easy target; now it is the first one.
3. Escalate through the right doorDenied? Written request, written denial, then the state agency in state-law states, and legal advice about a private FHA claim where the state path is thin. The updated playbook is on the denial page.

The letter matters more now, not less

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