Refusal of Service Animals - Legal?

gwynlas

There are specific rental sites that cater for dog owners so you are probably better off looking there. They tend to have facilities such as enclosed gardens the dog can use safely whilst off duty whereas another property mght have a garden that is not dog friendly.

Divorcing_Dad

oldernonethewiser said:

You might find this interesting

There's some absolute cobblers in there.

As someone pointed out.
Scenario: Person A visits AirBnB overnight with assistance dog. Hasn't warned the owner and just rocked up with the dog (as a commenter on that article pointed out, you don't have to give any advance notice)

Holiday cottage owner calls Person B taking the place the next day that they have had an assistance dog. Person B get severe anaphylaxis and will have to cancel 2 weeks holiday and even though it's non-cancellable under the Ts and Cs of AirBnB.

Now where do we go? The owner will have to pony up a refund and possibly more if Person B is already travelling or the difference between the cost of their property and wherever Person B can find.

It could indeed with Person B suing the owner under the Equality Act, because the owner has discriminated against them.

It's a proper mess.

And don't start me with religion. Some religions don't allow dogs in their homes (and bear in mind, the AirBnB owner may live in the holiday let too). Shall we start the "My protected characteristic is more important than your protected characteristic"?

katejo

DullGreyGuy said:

TELLIT01 said:

If the owners of the property don't even have to be informed of a service dog being in there it could create problems for them if they advertise the property as 'pet free'.  Anybody booking with pet allergies could then be at risk.  I'm not saying the property owner should be allowed to ban service dogs, but they really do need to know so that they can consider a deep clean.

A service animal isnt a pet and so technically it is "pet free" just not "animal free"

katejo said:

twopenny said:

Yes I was thinking that if they say they are pet free and another person is booking happily although they are alergic there's a problem there too.
They could probably do better to state that they are pet free to ensure alergies are catered for.
Paying for a deep clean because of one customer v another is hard. Not sure what the legislation is with regards 'rights' of one person over anothers. It's something that is tried in the courts with no real clear outcome.
I think you did the best you can in this situation.

Taxis aren't allowed to refuse passengers with service dogs (though I know it does happen).

I'd be interested in how far this has been tested... the law requires reasonable adjustments to be made and doesn't say with absolute certainty that a service animal must be allowed to go anywhere. It is clear you cannot make vague excuses like the next passenger may have allergies etc as an excuse but there'd have to be grounds if the driver was hyper allergic. Who'd want to go in the taxi where the driver is doing to go unconscious on route with anaphylactic shock?

Where the line is on what "reasonable" is becomes hard to define but all guidance to date is that the hurdle is higher than with other issues (we couldn't adapt one of our buildings for disabled customers because the frontage inc stairs were listed so couldn't build a ramp. 

More recently I have seen a BBC programme which featured this. Said that the taxi driver could only refuse if they had a serious allergy and that they must keep a document in the taxi to confirm this. 

jon81uk

Divorcing_Dad said:

oldernonethewiser said:

You might find this interesting

There's some absolute cobblers in there.

As someone pointed out.
Scenario: Person A visits AirBnB overnight with assistance dog. Hasn't warned the owner and just rocked up with the dog (as a commenter on that article pointed out, you don't have to give any advance notice)

Holiday cottage owner calls Person B taking the place the next day that they have had an assistance dog. Person B get severe anaphylaxis and will have to cancel 2 weeks holiday and even though it's non-cancellable under the Ts and Cs of AirBnB.

Now where do we go? The owner will have to pony up a refund and possibly more if Person B is already travelling or the difference between the cost of their property and wherever Person B can find.

It could indeed with Person B suing the owner under the Equality Act, because the owner has discriminated against them.

It's a proper mess.

And don't start me with religion. Some religions don't allow dogs in their homes (and bear in mind, the AirBnB owner may live in the holiday let too). Shall we start the "My protected characteristic is more important than your protected characteristic"?

Allergies aren't protected under the equality act so person B isn't discriminated against.

IslaMujeres

TELLIT01 said:

If the owners of the property don't even have to be informed of a service dog being in there it could create problems for them if they advertise the property as 'pet free'.  Anybody booking with pet allergies could then be at risk.  I'm not saying the property owner should be allowed to ban service dogs, but they really do need to know so that they can consider a deep clean.

Very good point.