Comment by Agustus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Agustus | Hacker News Reader

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I am excited that more people can learn the crazy world of business compliance and its insanity, especially within the ADA compliance.

What a great incentives lesson:

* You have a business that wants to make sure that employee cars are in tip top condition.

* You have an employee who wants to maintain tip-top condition.

* You have a user who would like to board their service animal

* There exists a certain percentage of service animals that their service animal status is for emotional stress and does not have an animal trained to the level of a blind user. These animals tear up a car, urinate within a car, etc. Witness the "service animals" on airplanes defecating and rerouting a plane. [1] Getting the "service animal" status entitles owners to a lot of benefits [2].

The owner does not want their car damaged by the "service animal" and lose the ability to provide services to future clients. The future clients will give bad ratings for the physical appearance of the car and take the owner's ability to work out of operation. If this issue was brought up by the taxi industry, I want to elect that person to the National Security Council, because this is a brilliant solution to bring down Uber.

1. http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Dog-Poo-Forces-Phi... 2. http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2014/08/03/flie...

Service animals trained for "emotional stress" are not service animals under the ADA. It's become really popular lately to register your dog as a "therapy dog"/"emotional support dog" or even just claim that it's registered as a therapy dog in order to get it into restaurants, however, this registration legally means nothing, and gives the animal no special rights of entry.

Service dogs must be trained to perform a task (not just alleviate stress with their presence) for a very small list of tasks defined by the ADA. Business owners have a right to refuse entry to "emotional support animals" http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/psychiatric-service-d...

Some businesses are required to allow entry to "emotional support animals"[1], though not under the ADA. The FHAA requires landlords, dormitories, apartment complexes etc. to provide reasonable accommodation for ESA, and the Air Carrier Access Act (which I hadn't heard of) requires it of airplanes.

[1] I really hate these things--maybe 5% are valid, but the rest are bunk.

It is a good point, but how many businesses want to take that up with the owners at the store. The emotional support animals (I say this because there was an emotional support hamster) by definition are supporting emotionally unstable individuals, do you want to tell that person to beat it?

I get that that's a concern for the driver, but that's a risk you take when you serve the public. Should the driver be allowed to refuse people with infants because the infant might throw up in the car or their diaper might leak? Should they be allowed to refuse drunk people? Sick people? Where does it stop? If you serve the public, serve all the public, or don't do it at all.

That's the fun of these service economy start-ups. When you run a hotel and a dog tears up the room, you can off set repair costs with a number of other profitable rooms. If you are the owner operator and your vehicle goes out of commission, what is the offset?

One possibility would be for drivers to negotiate with Uber to provide some kind of insurance to cover cleaning costs and downtime for specified incidents, similar to how AirBnB provides insurance to cover if a guest tears up your apartment. Whatever the solution is, this is a cost of doing business that should be borne by the business, not by disabled people and other members of the general public.

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