The looming question
From Service Dog Training
The looming question: Service dog user vs. person with allergies. Who wins?
This question has been tossed around on a multitude of message boards in the past year or two because of the prominence of the New York case where a school is prohibiting a deaf teenager from attending highschool with his hearing dog. The school district says that they provide enough accommodations for the boy and do not need to admit the service dog. The family states that under New York law, public schools are places of public accommodation and thus must admit the service dog. This case is still ongoing (and probably will be for a while from the looks of it) and it will be very interesting to see how it turns out. More information is easy to find by googling for John Cave (the student) or Simba (the hearing dog).
The question that has been popping up in the peanut galleries of the internet has been one of disability vs. disability. Essentially it goes like this: Does a disabled individual have the right to use a service dog in a facility where there may be people who are allergic to dogs? And specifically: Does a high school student have the right to use a service dog in school if there's a chance another student may be allergic to the dog? Below I will try to sum up both my opinions and the general guidelines of the law in response to these questions.
The first thing that must be addressed is the legal issue. Service dogs are allowed in places of public accommodation. This is true, and really, not up for dispute...it's the ADA and pretty clear. Now the other legal issue is that the theoretical problem cannot be used as a reason to deny service dog access. This is most often tested in cases where non-traditional breeds of dogs are used as service animals. The possibility the dog could cause a problem is not a sufficient reason to exclude the dog. You must have proof the dog is going to cause a problem before you can consider excluding it. Therefore, the fact that there might be an allergic individual does not hold up.
Second...assuming that there exists in this school a person who is allergic to dogs (which is overall pretty likely), it must be shown that this allergy is disabling to that individual for them to have rights under the ADA. For instance, having a runny nose or itchy eyes is an inconvenience, but it does not interfere with a major life activity and thus would not be considered a disability, nor require the school to accommodate. Having your throat swell shut interferes with the major life activity of breathing and would indeed be a qualifying disability under the ADA and require accommodation.
Third...the disabling problem must be caused directly by the presence of this service dog on the premises. Now, while having allergies in the range of discomfort isn't uncommon, having such a severe allergy to dogs that it is disabling is. An allergy this severe could be triggered by a dog owner having animal dander on their clothes and brushing against the allergic person in the hallway, or having dog dander drop off of an item of clothing into food in a cafeteria line. A person with this severe of an allergy is probably going to need other accommodations besides not being around the service dog.
Fourth...let's assume now that all the above criteria are met. There is a child at this school that has a known disabling allergies to dogs, that is triggered only if they are in the same room with a dog. There are, then, two people with disabilities at this school. Who should be accommodated? The answer is simple. Both! It does not seem to be to be too terribly difficult to arrange class schedules so that two individuals in a high school do not share the same room at the same time. In some larger schools, it could even be arranged that neither individual ever enters a room where the other has been or will be. Both students are accommodated. The deaf student is accompanied by the service dog he is permitted by law, and the allergic student is relieved from the fear of death by allergies by never being in the presence of the dog.
But, some say, what if the fact the dog has once been in an area can cause a reaction in the allergic student? This in my mind brings up a far larger issue...one of personal responsibility. As I mentioned before, a person with this severe of an allergy presumably would be at risk around anyone whose clothing has recently been touched by a dog. It is not possible to prohibit all students from owning or petting dogs. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the allergic student to protect himself as he is able. This is not only an issue at the high school level. What if this severely allergic person attends college? They may very well walk into class one day and find that a service dog user is in their class, or perhaps the professor uses a service dog. Perhaps even more threatening would be going into a college classroom to find that a service dog user was in a class there an hour or two before? What about sitting in a crowded lecture hall next to someone that played with their dog right before coming to class and is covered with dander? Or what about when this student enters the workplace and finds one of his coworkers has a service dog, or a client has a service dog, or someone at a business meeting has a service dog. While high school is a fairly controlled environment, the rest of the world is not. It is not possible to prevent a highly dog allergic individual from ever encountering dog dander without sealing them in plastic. It becomes then the responsibility of the individual to take the measures necessary for their safety, whether this is a medication, allergy shots, an epi pen or a breathing mask. Protecting a child from being exposed to a service dog in the high school setting because of allergies does nothing for the allergic child besides teach them they do not need to be prepared to deal with their disability. It is far better for the student to experiment and learn in a controlled setting under the watchful eye of teachers and administration who know their medical condition than to find out he has no way of responding to an allergic reaction when a service dog passes him at the mall and causes a reaction.
Overall, I consider that it would be very rare that any one individual at a high school would have an allergy to dogs so severe that it qualifies as a disability and that problems could not be prevented by re-arranging class schedules to keep the students from being in the same class at the same time. Also, if an individual has a severe enough allergy to prevent them from being in any room where a service animal has ever been, the physical removal of a service dog from the school grounds would not fix anything, it would merely set the student up to have his reaction caused by another source, such as the dog dander clinging to another student's coat.
