Proposed legislation would keep comfort animals out of stores

If a proposal currently waiting for debate in the Senate becomes law, a blind person's service dog will be allowed into the grocery store with him or her, but the sugar glider that keeps someone else from freaking out will have to wait outside.

SB173 would remove animals used purely for emotional or psychological reasons from the legal definition of a service animal. Bill sponsor Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, said her goal with the legislation was "to protect service animals," which she defined as dogs that are trained to help the blind, people in wheelchairs and people with seizure potential.

Dayton said she wants the state's legal definition to match the definition in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"I think that all pets truly fit into the category of comfort animals," Dayton said.

Dayton's legislation would essentially remove language that was added just two years ago from the state law governing the use of service animals.

Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake, sponsored the 2007 bill that put emotional service animals into the definition in the first place. Dayton told the committee she had spoken with McCoy about her proposal.

"He is aware I am doing this," Dayton said. "He said he was supportive."

Dayton said true service animals are specially trained and are therefore not a threat or nuisance to the public, something she said isn't true of most comfort animals.

Andrew Riggle, the public policy advocate for the Disability Law Center, disagreed with Dayton on that point and told the panel that current law requires comfort animal to have approval from a mental health professional.

"There is that check already existing," Riggle said.

Salt Lake resident Tammi Diaz, who suffers from a traumatic brain injury, called Dayton's proposal "discrimination against mental illness."

"If I didn't have my cats when my accident happened, who knows where I'd be now," Diaz told lawmakers. "I'd probably be on more medication."

Dayton acknowledged that comfort animals had an important role to play in people's lives, but she said it was not appropriate to have them in the same category as service animals.

"There are a lot of people, including President Reagan, who felt like a horse was a real therapeutic experience, so I can understand," she said.