About the Author: Kristina Bergsten, Esquire is an attorney with over 15 years of experience litigating for the rights of animals and their handlers. Her practice currently assists clients in five different states.

With the new May 2026 HUD Guidance change, Emotional Support Animals now require training unless you live in a state with state-specific protections for Emotional Support Animals.

Before this Guidance update, HUD treated emotional support animals differently from service animals because an ESA could qualify based on the emotional or therapeutic support it provided without being individually trained to perform disability-related work or tasks. The new Guidance changes HUD’s federal enforcement position. HUD now indicates that FHEO will only investigate an assistance-animal complaint when the animal is trained to perform work or a task related to the individual’s disability.

That creates an unusual situation because the Fair Housing Act itself has not changed. The FHA does not define “emotional support animal” or “assistance animal,” nor does it expressly establish a training requirement for ESAs. Instead, HUD has historically used Guidance to explain which assistance animals it considers protected and how it will enforce the FHA. So the practical effect of the May 2026 change is that training is now necessary if an ESA owner wants HUD to pursue a federal housing-discrimination complaint involving the animal, even though Congress did not amend the FHA to add an ESA training requirement.

The new approach also significantly narrows the traditional distinction between an ESA and a psychiatric service dog. Historically, the major distinction was that a psychiatric service dog had to be individually trained to perform disability-related work or tasks, while an ESA did not. Under HUD’s new enforcement position, an ESA must likewise be trained to respond to a symptom or effect of the owner’s disability for HUD to investigate the complaint. The animal does not need professional training, however. The owner can train the animal, and the relevant question is whether the animal has been trained to perform disability-related work or a task.

As mentioned earlier, that does not necessarily mean every ESA everywhere must now be trained. State law matters. Some states independently define or protect emotional support or assistance animals without imposing the same task-training requirement. In those states, an animal may continue to receive protection under state law even if it would not satisfy HUD’s new standard for federal enforcement. That is why the most precise way to describe the change is: as of May 2026, HUD requires disability-related training for an ESA before FHEO will investigate the owner’s federal housing-discrimination complaint.

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