When Can a Texas Landlord Legally Reject an Assistance Animal?

An enforcement posture is not the same thing as the law itself. That single sentence is the whole reason this page exists, because the headlines that reached landlords in Travis, Williamson and Hays County over the summer of 2026 read roughly as "HUD says you can say no to ESAs," and a lot of owners in Round Rock and Pflugerville are about to act on a version of the news that is missing the second half.

Here is the honest state of play for a Texas landlord: the federal agency that used to investigate you over an untrained emotional support animal has stepped back, the federal statute it was enforcing has not moved, the Texas statutes have not moved, and the courts are now the place where this gets decided. That combination means your exposure did not disappear. It changed shape.

One honest note before we start: this is a guide written by a property manager, not legal advice, and fair housing is the single worst area of landlord-tenant law to improvise in. Guidance and case law are moving right now. Before you deny any animal request, talk to a Texas fair housing attorney.

What changed on May 22, 2026

HUD rescinded the guidance every landlord checklist was built on, and narrowed who it will bring charges against. On May 22, 2026, Craig W. Trainor, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, issued an enforcement guidance memorandum to FHEO headquarters staff, the FHEO Office of Enforcement and FHEO Regional Directors titled Assessing Requests for the Use of an Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation Under the Fair Housing Act.

Four things in it matter to you:

1. The 2020 notice is permanently rescinded. The memo states the Assistant Secretary is "permanently rescinding FHEO's 2020 notice regarding assistance animals," and a footnote confirms that both the 2013 and 2020 assistance-animal notices "were rescinded on September 17, 2025," with the memo reconfirming those rescissions.
2. Charges now require a trained animal. "Effective immediately, for complaints related to animal-related reasonable accommodations, FHEO will find reasonable cause and recommend charges only for those cases involving animals trained to provide disability-related assistance."
3. Untrained ESA requests lose their presumption. The memo says requests to waive pet policies for animals trained to perform specific disability-related services "are presumptively reasonable," while "requests to waive pet policies for untrained ESAs are not," and adds that FHEO "no longer expects housing providers to categorically extend accommodations for trained assistance animals to untrained ESAs."
4. Open cases got rerouted. Regional Directors were instructed to send all open emotional support animal cases to the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement and Programs for a case-by-case determination on the merits.

The memo's stated reasoning is worth knowing because it tells you where this is heading. HUD says the 2020 notice "failed to provide greater clarity on the supposed distinction between pets and emotional support animals," that "an entire industry has emerged to convert pets into emotional support animals," and that more than 20% of FHEO's fair housing complaints now involve untrained ESAs. It also says the guidance imposed obligations without going through the notice-and-comment process required by the Administrative Procedure Act, which HUD calls "reason alone to rescind the guidance."

Going forward, FHEO says it "will use the training component of the ADA's definition for service animals to assess animal-related reasonable accommodation complaints under the Fair Housing Act." And HUD says it intends to run an actual notice-and-comment rulemaking to harmonize its regulations with the ADA. Translation for owners: today's answer is a policy memo, and a rulemaking could change it again. Do not carve this into your lease template as though it were settled.

What still binds you after the rescission

Everything that was a statute or a regulation is still a statute or a regulation. HUD withdrew its own interpretation of the law. It did not, and could not, withdraw the law.

Four obligations survive untouched:

• The Fair Housing Act itself. 42 U.S.C. §3604(f)(3)(B) still makes it discrimination to refuse "to make reasonable accommodations in the rules, policies, practices, or services, when such accommodation may be necessary to afford such person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling." HUD's memo quotes that language as live law.
• HUD's own regulation on trained service animals. 24 C.F.R. §100.204(b) uses waiving a no-pets policy so a blind person can live with a trained guide dog as its example of a required reasonable accommodation. The memo confirms this is "the only example of an animal-related reasonable accommodation provided in the Department's regulations." A regulation outranks a rescinded notice.
• The Texas Fair Housing Act. Texas Property Code §301.025(c)(2) independently defines discrimination to include "a refusal to make a reasonable accommodation in rules, policies, practices, or services if the accommodation may be necessary to afford the person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling." That is Texas law, administered by the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division, and a federal enforcement memo does nothing to it.
• The private lawsuit. This is the exposure most owners are missing. HUD's memo says it plainly: "Nothing in this enforcement guidance affects the rights of parties to seek redress through a private action in court," and notes that under 42 U.S.C. §3613(a)(1)(A) a complainant may file a civil action in federal district court or state court within two years of the discriminatory housing practice.

So the practical effect of the 2026 change is not "you can say no." It is "the free investigation that used to end most of these disputes at the agency has gone away, and what is left is a courtroom." An agency investigation is inconvenient. A federal fair housing suit with attorney's fees attached is a different order of problem.

The TWC route deserves a second look if you self-manage. TWC's Civil Rights Division investigates and enforces state and federal housing discrimination law in Texas, its published intake requires that the complaint be submitted within one year of the date of the discrimination, and it notes that a complaint cannot be filed with both TWC and HUD. TWC also notes that in most cases the property owner must have more than three properties for a complaint to proceed — which is a real distinction between a one-house accidental landlord in Kyle and a ten-door portfolio in Georgetown, and one you should verify against your own facts rather than assume.

Pet, ESA, service animal: three different legal objects

Most bad landlord decisions in this area come from treating one category as if it were another. Here are the three, each in one sentence, using the definitions that are actually in force.

A pet is an animal kept for companionship with no disability-related role, and your pet policy, pet rent and pet deposit apply to it normally.

A service animal, in the ADA regulations HUD now says it will borrow from, is an animal "individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability," where the tasks "must be directly related to the disability" — guiding a person who is blind, alerting a person who is deaf, responding during a seizure, retrieving items, providing physical support and balance.

An emotional support animal provides comfort or companionship rather than trained work, and the ADA regulatory language HUD now applies is explicit that "the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks for the purposes of this definition."

Texas draws its own line, and it is narrower than the federal one. Human Resources Code §121.002 defines both "assistance animal" and "service animal" as "a canine that is specially trained or equipped to help a person with a disability and that is used by a person with a disability." Training is in the Texas definition. So is being a dog.

That last row is the one owners forget when they hear "no deposit." §121.003(h) removes your ability to charge up front. It expressly preserves the tenant's liability "for damages done to the premises by the animal except for reasonable wear and tear." Your protection is documentation, not a deposit line item — which is why the move-in condition report matters more on an animal file than on any other. Deposit mechanics and the 30-day return clock are in our Texas security deposit guide.

The grounds for rejecting an assistance animal that actually hold up

Answer first: there are four defensible grounds, and "HUD changed the rules" is not one of them by itself. Each of these rests on a statute or a court decision rather than on guidance that can be rescinded.

Two of those citations are worth a sentence each, because they are the actual legal architecture of a denial. In Revock, the Third Circuit observed that "in emotional support animal cases, a housing provider may contest whether the accommodation is reasonable" — HUD cites it in the 2026 memo for exactly that point. In Vorchheimer, the same court held that the Act "requires that an accommodation be essential to achieve equal housing opportunity, measured against any alternatives that were offered." Reasonable and necessary, and alternatives count.

The case HUD leans on hardest is Henderson v. Five Properties LLC, No. 24-750 (E.D. La. July 16, 2025), where the court, presented with the 2020 notice, found simply: "HUD's Notice is unpersuasive." Per HUD's own description of the decision, the court held that waiver of a generally applicable pet fee for an emotional support animal was neither reasonable nor necessary. Note what that is and is not: a 2025 federal district court decision from Louisiana, persuasive rather than binding on a Texas court, on a pet-fee waiver rather than on a flat denial of the animal.

And there is a Texas footnote in the memo that cuts the other way. Among the decisions HUD lists as having deferred to the old guidance is Chavez v. Aber, 122 F. Supp. 3d 581 (W.D. Tex. 2015) — a Western District of Texas case. Texas federal courts have taken HUD's assistance-animal position seriously in the past. Whether they follow the 2026 reversal is not something anyone can tell you yet.

What documentation can a Texas landlord ask for?

Answer first: less certainty than you had a year ago, so ask in writing and apply one policy to everyone. The itemized documentation rules most Texas landlords have been following — what you may ask for a non-obvious disability, what an acceptable provider letter looks like, how to treat a certificate bought online — came from HUD Notice 2020-01. That notice is gone, and HUD has not published a replacement regulation.

What survives is the statutory standard. Because Texas Property Code §301.025(c)(2) and 42 U.S.C. §3604(f)(3)(B) both condition the duty on the accommodation being necessary for equal opportunity to use and enjoy the dwelling, you are entitled to enough information to evaluate two things: that there is a disability, and that the animal relates to it. HUD's memo itself criticizes the online ESA-letter industry and cites two complaints it dismissed in April 2026, one involving three ESAs supported by "an online form letter."

Practically, for our Central Texas owners, that means:

• Put the request in writing. A verbal mention at a showing is not a file. Give the applicant or tenant a short written accommodation-request form and use the same form every time.
• Ask about disability-related need, never about the diagnosis. "What disability-related need does the animal address?" is a different question from "what is your condition?" The first is about the accommodation. The second invites a claim.
• Ask whether the animal is individually trained to perform work or tasks, and what those tasks are. This is the question that now determines which side of HUD's line you are on, and almost no Texas landlord form asks it.
• Never require a specific vendor, a registry, a certificate, a vest or an ID card. None of those has ever been a legal requirement, no statute creates one, and demanding one is a bad fact in front of a jury.
• Write the decision down the day you make it. Date it, state the ground, attach what you relied on.

One more thing, and it is the point owners find least intuitive: Texas Human Resources Code §121.006 makes faking an assistance animal a crime, and that still does not give you a self-help right to deny the request. As amended by House Bill 4164, effective September 1, 2023, it is an offense to "intentionally or knowingly represent that an animal is an assistance animal or a service animal when the animal is not specially trained or equipped to help a person with a disability," punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 plus 30 hours of community service to be completed within one year. That is a matter for a prosecutor. Your remedy is a documented process, not a verdict you reach yourself.

Can you charge a pet fee or deposit for an assistance animal?

For a trained service animal in Texas: no. That is a state statute, and it did not change in 2026. Human Resources Code §121.003(h) provides that a person with a total or partial disability who has or obtains a service animal "is entitled to full and equal access to all housing accommodations provided for in this section, and may not be required to pay extra compensation or make a deposit for the animal but is liable for damages done to the premises by the animal except for reasonable wear and tear."

Read the conditions carefully, because they are where the analysis lives:

• It runs to a service animal as Texas defines it — a canine that is specially trained or equipped. An untrained comfort animal is outside the Texas definition.
• It bars extra compensation or a deposit for the animal — pet rent, pet fee, pet deposit, animal surcharge, however your lease labels it.
• It expressly preserves liability for damage beyond reasonable wear and tear. You are not accepting unlimited risk; you are moving from prepayment to documentation.

For an untrained ESA the fee question is now genuinely open. HUD's memo notes that the rescinded 2020 notice was what declared pet fees could not be assessed for untrained ESAs, and the Henderson court found waiver of a generally applicable pet fee neither reasonable nor necessary on the facts before it. That is a real shift in the wind. It is also one district court and one policy memo, against a live private right of action. Charging a pet fee on an untrained ESA today is a decision to be the test case unless your attorney tells you otherwise.

What is genuinely unsettled right now

We would rather name the gaps than paper over them, because the landlords who get hurt in this area are the ones who were told a moving target was a fixed one.

• Breed, size and weight limits. The flat prohibition came from the rescinded notice. No replacement regulation exists and no Texas statute addresses it. Applying a breed limit to a trained service dog remains, in our view, the single most litigable thing on this page.
• Response timelines. The "respond promptly" expectation landlords quote came from the 2020 notice. There is no statutory clock. Slow-walking a request is still evidence of constructive denial, so respond fast anyway.
• How Texas courts will treat the reversal. Courts previously gave the old notices deference, including in the Western District of Texas. Nobody knows yet how much weight they will give the new memo.
• The coming rulemaking. HUD says it intends notice-and-comment rulemaking to align its rules with the ADA. Whatever emerges will be a regulation with real force, and it could land anywhere in the range the comments push it toward.
• Federally assisted housing. The memo expressly does not address complaints against housing providers under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act or the ADA. If you take a voucher or your property sits in an assisted program, do not read this memo as covering you.

Because the ground is moving, our older guide to whether to allow pets in your rental describes the pre-2026 assistance-animal framework; the federal enforcement posture summarized here superseded parts of it in 2026, and this post is the current statement.

How to handle an animal request, step by step

1. Acknowledge in writing within 48 hours. No decision yet. Just proof you engaged.
2. Send one standard accommodation-request form. Same form, every applicant, every tenant, every time. A consistent process is the cheapest fair housing defense that exists.
3. Ask the two permitted questions. Is there a disability-related need, and is the animal individually trained to perform work or tasks related to it? Nothing about the diagnosis.
4. Sort the request into one of three buckets. Trained service animal, untrained support animal, or pet. Write down which and why.
5. If it is a trained service animal, grant it and charge nothing extra. §121.003(h) settles it. Document condition at move-in instead.
6. If it is untrained, do not deny it on the memo alone. Call counsel. Then decide, in writing, on a ground from the table above.
7. Never bundle the animal decision with anything else. Denying the application "for credit reasons" three days after an ESA request is the timing pattern that makes a retaliation or pretext claim easy to plead — the same instinct behind the six-month window we cover in our Texas rent increase guide.
8. Keep the file for at least three years. The private action window is two years from the practice. Outlast it.

What this means in Austin, Round Rock and Georgetown

Answer first: in the Central Texas single-family market, this is a screening-desk problem more than a courtroom problem. The Austin metro rents a very high share of detached houses with real yards, and the animal request shows up at application, from an applicant you have not signed yet. That is precisely the moment when a rushed no becomes a discrimination file.

Three local realities shape how we advise owners across Travis, Williamson and Hays County:

• Scattered single-family portfolios have no "project-wide policy" cover. An apartment operator in Cedar Park can point to a uniform written animal policy across 300 units. An owner with houses in Leander, Kyle and Buda is making individual decisions, and individual decisions are what get compared to each other in discovery. Write your policy down even if you own two houses.
• HOA and master-planned community rules do not override the accommodation duty. "The HOA in my Georgetown neighborhood bans that breed" is not an answer to a federal accommodation request, and passing it along as your denial does not transfer the risk to the association.
• Turnover math still argues for yes on trained animals. Say no to a qualified applicant with a trained service dog in a market where good applicants have choices, and the cost is not the fee you did not collect — it is the extra weeks of vacancy while you find the next one, plus whatever the denial file costs you later.

For the broader set of Texas rules that govern the relationship, our plain-English guide to Texas Property Code Chapter 92 is the pillar, and what a landlord cannot do in Texas covers the prohibitions that surprise owners most often.

Five mistakes that turn an animal request into a complaint

• Reading a HUD enforcement memo as permission. It reallocates HUD's investigators. It does not repeal §3604(f)(3)(B), §301.025(c)(2), or the two-year private right of action.
• Charging pet rent on a trained service dog. §121.003(h) is a Texas statute with no 2026 change and no ambiguity. This is the easiest violation to prove and the easiest to avoid.
• Asking for the diagnosis. Disability-related need is a fair question. Medical detail is not, and the question itself is the evidence.
• Deciding by phone with no paper. If the file cannot show what you asked, what you were told and why you decided, you will be arguing against the tenant's version of a conversation.
• Applying a breed or weight limit to a trained animal because a rule of thumb says you now can. The rule of thumb came from guidance that no longer exists, in either direction. Get counsel.

How we handle animal requests

Flat Fee Landlord manages single-family rentals across the Austin metro — Travis, Williamson and Hays counties, including Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Pflugerville, Leander, Kyle and Buda. Animal requests run through one written process here: same form for every applicant, the two permitted questions and no others, a dated written decision naming its ground, and counsel involved before any denial. When a request is a trained service animal, it is granted and no animal charge is added, because §121.003(h) says so.

We charge a flat monthly management fee rather than a percentage of rent, and on this topic that alignment matters in a quiet way: we have no incentive to push a pet fee or an animal surcharge onto a file to lift a percentage. Our plans are $139 (Basic) / $179 (Preferred) / $349 (Concierge) on annual billing — the same dollar amount whether your house rents for $1,800 or $3,800. Your management cost should not rise just because your rent did.

Get your free rental analysis and we will send you a current market rent range for your specific Texas address with the leased comps behind it. If you want the full picture on what we do, our Austin property management page covers what is included.

Sources and last reviewed

Last reviewed September 3, 2026. Every citation above was verified against the primary source listed here on that date. This area is in active flux: HUD has announced an intended rulemaking, and no court has yet ruled on the 2026 enforcement guidance. Confirm current authority before acting on a specific matter.

• HUD Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, Enforcement Guidance: Assessing Requests for the Use of an Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation Under the Fair Housing Act (Craig W. Trainor, Assistant Secretary, May 22, 2026) — rescission of FHEO-2020-01, the trained-animal enforcement standard, preservation of private actions, and the intended rulemaking
• HUD, Assistance Animals — the Department's current assistance-animal page
• Texas Human Resources Code §121.002, Definitions — "assistance animal" and "service animal" defined as a canine specially trained or equipped to help a person with a disability
• Texas Human Resources Code §121.003, Discrimination Prohibited — subsection (h): equal access to housing accommodations, no extra compensation or deposit for the animal, liability for damage beyond reasonable wear and tear
• Texas Human Resources Code §121.006, Improper Use of Assistance and Service Animals; Offense — misrepresentation offense, fine of not more than $1,000 plus 30 hours community service (as amended by H.B. 4164, eff. Sept. 1, 2023)
• Texas Property Code §301.025, Disability — Texas Fair Housing Act reasonable-accommodation duty at subsection (c)(2) and the direct-threat / substantial-damage limit at subsection (f)
• Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division, Housing Discrimination and How to Submit a Housing Discrimination Complaint — state enforcement, the one-year filing window, and intake requirements
• 28 C.F.R. §§35.104, 36.104 — the ADA definition of "service animal" that HUD's 2026 memo adopts for Fair Housing Act animal cases
• 24 C.F.R. §100.204(b) — HUD's only regulatory example of a required animal accommodation, the trained guide dog and the no-pets waiver
• 42 U.S.C. §3604(f)(3)(B) and §3613(a)(1)(A) — the reasonable-accommodation duty and the two-year private right of action
• Henderson v. Five Properties LLC, No. 24-750, 2025 WL 1951763 (E.D. La. July 16, 2025); Revock v. Cowpet Bay West Condominium Ass'n, 853 F.3d 96 (3d Cir. 2017); Vorchheimer v. Philadelphian Owners Ass'n, 903 F.3d 100 (3d Cir. 2018); Chavez v. Aber, 122 F. Supp. 3d 581 (W.D. Tex. 2015) — all as cited and characterized in HUD's May 22, 2026 enforcement guidance