Assistance Animals In South Carolina

Service Animals and Emotional Support Animals

Introduction

People with disabilities have legal rights to have animals help them in their daily lives. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), US Fair Housing Act, and several other federal and South Carolina laws protect these rights.

However, these legal rights depend on several factors, such as:

  1. Where is the person?
  2. What kind of training does the animal have?
  3. Does the animal provide emotional support to a person with a disability?   
  4. What kind of animal is it?   

This guide explains your rights and is broken up into multiple parts focused on the first question, “Where is the person” followed by a section on how to advocate for your rights.  

What is the Difference?

People often use the terms Assistance Animal, Service Animal, and Emotional Support Animal as if they mean the same thing. They do not. These terms have different legal meanings, and different rules apply to each one. You need to understand the difference before moving forward in the guide.

Service Animal: A service animal under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a dog that has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability, where the tasks are directly related to the person’s disability. This definition includes dogs trained to help with physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental health conditions. A miniature horse can also be a service animal under the ADA.

South Carolina law protects users of Service Animals-in-Training in same way as already-trained Service Animals. See Layla’s Law at SC Code section 47-3-910 and following.

Emotional Support Animal: An animal that provides emotional support, comfort, or relief to a person with a disability, but is not trained to perform specific tasks related to the disability. Emotional Support Animals do not qualify as service animals under the ADA.

Assistance Animal: An Assistance Animal is defined (primarily for housing law under the Fair Housing Act (FHA) as an animal that works, provides assistance, or performs tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability, or that provides emotional support that helps one or more identified effects of a person’s disability.

Outline

Part 1: Public Places

Part 2: State and Local Governments

Part 3: Employment

Part 4: Transportation

Part 5: Housing

Part 6: How to Enforce Your Legal Rights

Web Guide Navigation

This new accessible webpage was built so you can move through this guide in multiple ways. You can click on the tabs at the top to start a new section. You can also choose to click through the table of contents located above to go to a specific section that interests you. Lastly, we do have a pdf version available if you prefer to have something to download.