U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Issues Enforcement Memorandum About Emotional Support Animals
In an internal memo dated May 22, 2026, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) Craig Trainor announced that he was “permanently rescinding FHEO’s 2020 notice regarding assistance animals.” The memo cites Executive Order 14219 from February 2025, which instructed agencies to “de-prioritiz[e] actions to enforce regulations that are based on anything other than the best reading of a statute.” This enforcement memo also follows a September 2025 notice that initially rescinded support animal guidance as well as other documents.
Over the past ten or so years, colleges, universities, and schools have understood from federal guidance and enforcement that compliance with the Fair Housing Act (FHA) included allowing untrained assistance animals or emotional support animals (ESA) to live in campus residence halls as a reasonable accommodation for students or employees with disabilities living in campus or school housing. Institutions have navigated allergies, risks regarding animal types, animal welfare concerns, and more, while developing policies and guidelines for people seeking to live on-campus with their ESAs.
The key takeaway from this new document is that “FHEO will find reasonable cause and recommend charges only for [animal-related] cases involving animals trained to provide disability-related assistance.” Practically, this means that FHEO will not find reasonable cause or recommend charges for animal-related cases involving emotional support animals, which are not required to be trained.
Recall that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations have specific standards for a service animal; the animal must be “individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability.” ESAs require no such training.
The FHEO memo takes care to say that the guidance is limited to FHEO enforcement of the FHA and does not apply to Section 504 or the ADA, which are not enforced by FHEO. The memo itself does not mention residence halls, but it has long been understood by the higher education community that the FHA applies to nearly all housing. Regulations dating back to the 1980’s include “dormitory rooms” as an example of a dwelling unit, and cases settled in 2015 and 2018 apply the ESA guidance to campus housing for students and employees.
What does this memo mean for educational institutions? The memo may not have an immediate impact on actual policies and practices, which are by now long established and likely well understood. However, if institutions seek to roll back approvals for ESAs, relief would not be available to impacted students or employees under the current FHEO. Simply put, complaints to FHEO alleging housing discrimination based on failure to permit an assistance animal, or charging a pet fee for an ESA, would likely fall flat under the current enforcement parameters. Open cases about ESAs will not be immediately dismissed; rather, the memo says that all open ESA cases will be reviewed on a case-by-case determination for a determination on the merits.
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