Illinois Assistance Animal Integrity Act

Illinois passed a statute in 2019 that does something unusual: it sets out, in one short Act, exactly what a housing provider may ask for when a resident requests an assistance animal, and exactly what it may not charge. Chapter 310, Act 120 “may be cited as the Assistance Animal Integrity Act” (§ 120/1), effective 1 January 2020.

It names condominium associations outright. A “housing provider” is “any owner, housing provider, property management company, property manager, government entity, condominium board, condominium association, cooperative, or related entity, and any agent or employee thereof, engaged in the selling, leasing, management, control, or governance of residential housing” (§ 120/5). A condominium board is named in terms, and so is your manager. A non-condominium homeowners or common interest community association is not named: it is caught, if at all, as a “related entity… engaged in the… governance of residential housing”.

An “assistance animal” is defined by the accommodation, not by the species or by training. It means “an emotional support or service animal that qualifies as a reasonable accommodation under the federal Fair Housing Act or the Illinois Human Rights Act”. Emotional support animals are inside this Act by name.

When your association may ask for documentation — and when it may not

The threshold question comes first, and most disputes are decided by it. A housing provider that receives a request to except a resident from a policy prohibiting or restricting animals “may require the person to produce reliable documentation of the disability and disability-related need for the animal only if the disability or disability-related need is not readily apparent or known to the housing provider” (§ 120/10(a)).

There is no general right to demand paperwork. But read the condition as written: documentation may be required only if the disability or the disability-related need is not readily apparent or known. Where both are already obvious or known to the board, the route is closed entirely; where the disability is obvious but the need for this animal is not, the board may still ask about the need. On a request for more than one animal the board may seek documentation of the need for each animal — “unless the need for an animal is apparent”.

A board may offer a form, but may not insist on it. It “may ask a person to make the request on a standardized form, but cannot deny the request because the person did not use the form” to submit documentation that meets the Act’s requirements.

More than one animal is treated one animal at a time. A provider receiving a request for more than one assistance animal may ask for documentation establishing the disability-related need for each animal — “unless the need for an animal is apparent”.

What the documentation has to be

Where documentation may properly be required, § 120/10(b) says it must do three things and only three: it must be in writing; be made by a person with whom the individual has a therapeutic relationship; and describe the individual’s disability-related need for the assistance animal.

“Therapeutic relationship” is where this Act does its real work. It means the provision of medical care, program care, or personal care services, “in good faith, for and with actual knowledge of, an individual’s disability and that individual’s disability-related need for an assistance animal”, by a physician or other medical professional, a mental health service provider, or “a non-medical service agency or reliable third party who is in a position to know about the individual’s disability” (§ 120/5).

And then the definition excludes the certificate industry, in terms. A therapeutic relationship “does not include an entity that issues a certificate, license, or similar document that purports to confirm, without conducting a meaningful assessment of a person’s disability or a person’s disability-related need for an assistance animal, that a person: (a) has a disability; or (b) needs an assistance animal”.

An online certificate bought without an assessment does not satisfy § 120/10(b). That is a real limit on residents, and it is the reason the Act is called the Integrity Act.

Two further limits on what a board may ask. It may require additional supporting documentation only if the initial documentation does not satisfy subsection (b), and where the shortfall is in showing the therapeutic relationship it may ask for information describing the professional relationship (§ 120/10(d)). And “[n]othing in this Act shall be construed as requiring documentation of a specific diagnosis regarding a disability or disability-related need” (§ 120/10(g)). That is a rule of construction rather than a prohibition — but a diagnosis is not among the three things subsection (b) requires, and subsection (d) lets a board ask for more only where the initial documentation fails (b). So a board holding compliant documentation has no route to a diagnosis. It may still verify that the documentation is authentic (§ 120/10(h)).

When a request may be refused

Two routes, and the second requires an individualised assessment. A housing provider may deny a documented request, or rescind one it granted, where the accommodation imposes “an undue financial and administrative burden” or “a fundamental alteration to the nature of the operations” — or where, “after conducting an individualized assessment, there is reliable objective evidence” that the specific animal:

(i) poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others that cannot be reduced or eliminated by another reasonable accommodation; (ii) causes substantial physical damage to the property of others, again where no other accommodation would fix it; or (iii) “has engaged in a pattern of uncontrolled behavior that its handler has not taken effective action to correct” (§ 120/10(c)).

Every limb of that is about this animal on this evidence. Breed rules, size rules and blanket assumptions are not what the section describes.

Other residents matter, but they are not a veto. A provider “may consider the documented disability-related needs of other residents” when evaluating reasonableness — but “may not deny an assistance animal solely due to the disability-related needs of another resident; rather, a housing provider must attempt to balance the disability-related needs of all residents” (§ 120/10(e)). A neighbour’s allergy is a factor to be balanced, not an answer.

Money: what your association may and may not charge

This is the paragraph to quote at a board. A housing provider “may not require a resident to pay a pet-related deposit, pet fee, or related pet assessment, even if the housing provider allows pets and requires pet owners to pay such costs”. Nor may it “require a resident with an assistance animal to procure special liability insurance or coverage for the assistance animal” (§ 120/10(f)).

What it may charge is damage, on equal terms. A provider may require a resident “to cover the costs of repairs for damage the animal causes to the resident’s dwelling unit or the common areas, reasonable wear and tear excepted, in the same manner it would for damage caused by any other resident”. Actual damage, charged the way any other damage is charged — not a deposit held against the possibility of it.

The association’s protection, and the rights this Act does not touch

A housing provider is not liable for injuries caused by an animal it allowed as an accommodation. “Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, a housing provider shall not be liable for injuries caused by a person’s assistance animal permitted on the housing provider’s property as a reasonable accommodation to assist the person with a disability” under the Fair Housing Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Illinois Human Rights Act or any other federal, State or local law (§ 120/15). A board that grants a request is not taking on the risk of the animal.

And the Act is a floor, not a ceiling. Nothing in it may be construed to “limit individuals’ rights under the Fair Housing Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Illinois Human Rights Act, or any other federal, State, or local civil rights law”, or to “limit the liability of housing providers under such laws” (§ 120/20). This Act regulates the documentation conversation; it does not shrink the underlying right.

How this Act meets the discrimination statutes

This Act does not create the right to an assistance animal. It regulates how the request is handled. The right itself comes from the Illinois Human Rights Act and the federal Fair Housing Act — this Act’s own definitions of “assistance animal”, “disability” and “reasonable accommodation” are all written by reference to those two statutes. If the accommodation does not qualify under them, this Act has nothing to operate on.

Illinois answers the assistance-animal question in more than one place, and the sections do different jobs. The general hook is § 5/3-102.1(C)(2) of the Human Rights Act, which makes it a civil rights violation “to refuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services, when such accommodations may be necessary to afford such person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling”. That is the provision an emotional-support-animal request runs on, and it is not limited to dogs or to physical disability.

Section 5/3-104.1 adds a narrower, dog-specific violation: refusing to sell or rent to, or discriminating against, a blind or hearing-impaired person or a person with a physical disability because they have a guide, hearing or support dog, and requiring an extra charge for one “other than for actual damage done to the premises by the dog”. Those are the violations. This Act is the procedure that sits on top of both: who may be asked for what, and what may not be charged, in any assistance-animal request.

In a condominium the board has a duty in its own statute — but a bounded one. Section 605/18.4(q) of the Condominium Property Act makes it a board duty to reasonably accommodate a unit owner with a disability “as required by the federal Civil Rights Act of 1968, the Human Rights Act and any applicable local ordinances” — and then confines that duty to “the exercise of its powers with respect to the use of common elements or approval of modifications in an individual unit”. An animal kept inside a unit is not obviously within either. The Common Interest Community Association Act has no equivalent provision at all.

So the reason a no-pets rule yields is not the condominium Act. Section 605/18.4(h) bars a rule that conflicts with that Act or the condominium instruments, and a no-pets rule mirroring a no-pets clause in the declaration conflicts with neither. What defeats it is this Act — written around a request “to make an exception to the housing provider’s policy prohibiting or restricting animals” (§ 120/10(a)) — together with § 5/3-102.1(C)(2) of the Human Rights Act.

Cannabis, flags and solar are dealt with elsewhere, and so is everything else about rules, assessments and records: see the Condominium Property Act, the Common Interest Community Association Act and the Homeowners’ Energy Policy Statement Act, all on the Illinois hub.