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Comment by valuearb | Hacker News Reader

It's not the service animals that are the problem, is the "emotional support" animals, or more specifically, their owners.

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The article is specifically about a blind person, so clearly service animals are not well accepted by many Uber drivers.

Emotional Support animals are not by default considered service animals by the ADA. (IANAL and State / Local laws may say different things.) They must be trained to perform at least one specific task in order to qualify as a service animal under the ADA. You are allowed to ask two specific questions about dogs: "Is the dog a service animal required because of a disability?" and "What work or task has the dog been trained to perform?" It seems like something that Uber could allow a user to input, and prevent their drivers from rejecting those users for the presence of the animal.

Animals do always have to be under control of the owner though, so if one is not under control that is an acceptable reason to reject them.

And I believe the latest guidance is that basically only dogs fall under the service animal category, so random other animals people use for emotional support would not qualify either. The exception seems to be miniature horses for specific limited cases.

https://www.ada.gov/regs2010/service_animal_qa.html https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm

100% agree. "emotional support" animals are basically a free pass for shitty people to take advantage of the system and take their non-trained, horribly mannered animals with them wherever they want, which sucks for people that have actual need for emotional support and service animals.

Which is a problem for legislators. Taxi drivers should not be the arbiters of whether an animal is a true support animal or not.

How do you tell if a dog is a service dog though? The ADA already allows excluding misbehaving service animals, which should cover a good portion of 'fraudulent emotional service animals' considering how well most people mistrain their animals.

There are legitimate service animals for a wide variety of real conditions that a lay person could not be expected to consider. Dogs that can detect incoming seizures or problematic psychological states, and they could look very similar to an 'emotional support animal' but actually be a legitimate service animal.

I was out for breakfast for the first time since the pandemic started this weekend (I'm fully vaccinated now) and in walks a guy with a dog sporting a "Service Animal" sash that in tiny letters said "emotional support". I was paralyzed - I was traumatized by my interactions with dogs when I was a kid; where's my say in having untrained animals in my vicinity? This kind of shit needs to be ended but there should be NO issue with blind people with actual service animals receiving service anywhere

Yeah my brother's wife will completely shut down and start screaming if a dog comes within 5 feet of her. Where she grew up in China dogs were wild animals that would viciously attack you if you got near them, so it's a pretty understandable reaction. So I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted here.

Also having personally seen how poorly trained most peoples' dogs are I would be very uncomfortable having a random stranger's dog near me. A lot of the dogs I encounter on the street are neurotic wrecks incapable of passing without barking, leash pulling, or lunging.

I'm downvoted because it's an unpopular opinion in the US that people shouldn't force their pets on others who are uncomfortable interacting with them or just being around them and HN readership is largely US-centric. In my experience many recreational dog owners in the US are incredibly selfish people

Legally an actual service animal must be trained. Emotional support, for a variety of reasons including things like PTSD and anxiety attacks, is a completely valid use of service animals. How do you know they were not trained?

If they were misbehaving, that's reason for them to be rejected, training or not. If not, legally allergies and fear of dogs are not valid reasons for denying access or refusing service to people using service animals. Though Uber should certainly attempt to pair the rider with a different driver first, if they have registered that allergy / fear ahead of time.

>If not, legally allergies and fear of dogs are not valid reasons for denying access or refusing service to people using service animals.

This should change. Especially on the allergy front. Forcing someone to suffer an allergic reaction because a customer has a service dog is immoral.

All 15 of your employees have medically serious dog allergies?

If a small business owner happened to be that unlucky, how would you propose it be dealt with? If I were such a business owner, I would honestly attempt to arrange the customer be handled by a competitor, if it was legit a situation where everyone at my company happened to be seriously allergic to dogs.

I think that business owner should realize by employee 12 or 13 they probably need to diversify a bit in order to stay legally compliant. It is not a complicated or difficult thing to handle.

I am not taking a stance on the law itself, but it is what the current law is. And has been in place for at least a decade in its current form. If it is a serious issue, then people should definitely work to change the law.

But, unless they are the only one available or something, there is nothing in the law saying that specific employee has to keep providing service. The company should make a best effort to remove that employee from contact, without impacting the service of the customer.

Refusing to serve someone because they are blind is also immoral.

I'll let you decide who has the better case.

> Legally an actual service animal must be trained

There's a distinction between trained service animals and emotional support animals. Both are support animals but the latter are largely untrained which is why airlines have moved to ban them. I have no issue whatsoever with trained service animals!

I think there's a conversation to be had about dogs as vicious in nature but I have been laughed out of the room when I mention this to an in-person audience. But many USPS/UPS/FedEx and now Amazon delivery people are aware of this: untrained dogs are a danger

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