Can you bring a service dog to court?
“Service animals are allowed to accompany people with disabilities in all spaces run by state and local governments, businesses and nonprofit organizations where the general public can go,” according to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
But if the service animal isn’t specifically designated for the person appearing before a federal judge, is the animal still allowed?
That was tested this month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, when a federal judge initially ordered a service dog with its trainer to leave, bringing up questions of who gets to bring a support animal to court. The story was reported by WKRG News.
Kris Allfrey, an Army veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and his wife came to Mobile, Alabama, from their home in Ohio so each could testify on different days in an ongoing legal matter on different days, according to the story.
Allfrey trains his wife’s service dog, Dewey, whose job is alerting the couple to Allfrey’s wife’s seizures and calming the couple when they have PTSD and anxiety episodes, according to the proceedings’ transcripts.
On the day Allfrey was set to testify, the dog accompanied him to court because his wife was in the hospital, according to the transcripts. In a sidebar, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Moorer asked if Dewey was Allfrey’s service animal. After learning it was not, the judge asked that Allfrey have the dog, who Allfrey’s lawyer said had not been disruptive, removed, the transcripts state.
“He’s to make arrangements for whatever needs to be done,” the judge said.
Franklin Hollis Eaton Jr., counsel for the plaintiffs including Allfrey’s wife, countered that because Allfrey was training the service dog, he had the right as a trainer to take the pooch into the federal courthouse.
“It is my courtroom,” the judge said.
According to the ADA, a service animal is a dog to perform a task related to a person’s disability.
While it requires that service animals in training and their trainers be given the same access as people with disabilities, neither the ADA nor the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which also covers people with disabilities, applies to the federal judiciary, says J.D. Hsin, assistant professor at the University of Alabama School of Law.
“Title II of the ADA applies to local and state courts, but not federal courts, and Section 504 extends only to executive agencies, [U.S. Postal Service], and a few other categories of programs or activities receiving federal funds—none of which includes the federal judiciary,” he adds.
There is no national judiciary policy governing service animals in the courtroom, says Charles Hall, public affairs specialist at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
“The presiding judicial officer has the authority to decide whether to grant accommodation requests related to access issues in their cases and courtrooms,” he told the ABA Journal. “The judicial officer may deny a request if it is determined that the requested accommodation would fundamentally change the nature of the judicial proceeding or cause an undue financial or administrative burden on the court.”
Kathy Hessler, assistant dean for animal legal education at the George Washington University Law School and director of its Animal Legal Education Initiative, agrees that “federal buildings are generally exempt, though people still have a constitutional right to access courts.”
Alabama Code states a service dog trainer can mean an owner with a disability involved in the training process, someone with one year’s experience training animals and is actively involved in the process or someone with photo ID stating they are involved in work at a school or organization that trains service dogs.
“Legally speaking, there really isn’t much in the way of requirements for someone to call themselves a service dog trainer (in Alabama, nor in any state),” Krista Wirth, author of a paper on dog training recently published in Animal and Natural Resource Law Review on dog training, wrote to the ABA Journal. “And there are no federal certifications or state licensing requirements for someone to call themselves a service dog trainer or pet dog trainer for that matter.”
As use of service animal grows, there have been attempts to clarify the rules at the federal level. Service animals are defined as a dog trained to do work or perform task for a person with a disability, such as a seeing-eye dog or dogs that help their owners with anxiety attacks, according to the ADA. That differs from emotional support or therapy animals that provide comfort just by being with a person. Those animals are not covered under ADA regulations.
In 2019, the Courthouse Dogs Act, stating federal judges could allow specially trained and certified dogs to accompany a witness testifying in a criminal proceeding, passed the U.S. Senate, but stalled in the House.
Two years later, the Courtroom Dogs Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate and would require the Department of Justice to develop “best practice guidelines for the use of service or support dogs in federal courtrooms and grand jury rooms.
Still best practices don’t provide legal requirements, says Laura Ireland, associate director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
“The [Courtroom Act] focuses on having trained therapy dogs available to victims. It is not quite the same as allowing people to bring their own animals into courtrooms with them,” she adds. “It would have clarified some situations and provided some guidance for when and how support animals should be allowed (and would require notice to the court).” That act stalled in committee.
“We need to push Congress to pass another law that makes federal courts and judges subject to the ADA, just like the state judges and state courthouses are,” Allfrey’s attorney Eaton says.
In Mobile, Eaton told the judge there was no one to help with Dewey, forcing Allfrey to not continue his testimony, according to the transcript. The dog was a good boy, Eaton told the ABA Journal, quietly laying on the floor next to Allfreys during their time in court.
“The only reason the judge allowed Dewey to stay the rest of the day was because he was so adamant about not continuing the trial,” Eaton says.
The judge “has no comment about the Allfrey matter,” Christopher L. Ekman, clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, wrote to the ABA Journal.
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