Gov. Stitt vetoes bill targeting 'fake' service animals. Is there another solution?
Oklahoma may have narrowly avoided creating a new criminal charge targeting people who misrepresent their pet as a service animal.
The proposed law, which has been vetoed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, targeted people who claim their animal is a service dog when it doesn't meet federal guidelines for trained service dogs.
House Bill 1178 would have made such an act a misdemeanor. Although it was vetoed by the governor, the state House and Senate could now override the decision and place it into law. That would be a challenging request, however, because an earlier House vote did not reach the number of votes to be considered veto-proof.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, service animals are defined as dogs that are trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, or calming a person with post-traumatic stress disorder.
In his veto message released Wednesday, May 14, Stitt suggested lawmakers find another solution.
"While we all might agree that an animal mislabeled as a service animal is frustrating, criminalizing the practice is an overreaction," Stitt wrote. "There are other ways to address this issue without adding more criminal statutes to our code."
The bill's author, state Rep. Marilyn Stark, R-Bethany, said she had been working on the legislation since 2019 and introduced it after constituents who own service animals complained about untrained dogs approaching theirs.
"For me, this just says don't lie about what your animal is. Be honest. If the business wants to let you in, they can," Stark said during discussion earlier this year in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. "There are people not getting service animals because it's such a problem; they don't want to have to interact with the untrained 'service' animals that are out there."
If the bill became law, Oklahoma would have become one of 35 states that have laws against the use of fraudulent service dogs, according to the Michigan State University Animal Legal and Historical Center.
Businesses that serve the public can ban most animals from their premises but cannot turn away legitimate service animals that are properly controlled by their handler. Problems can arise, however, because privacy laws only let businesses ask two questions to determine their legitimacy:
Is the dog a service animal required because of a disability?
What work or task has the dog been trained to perform?
Staff cannot ask about the person's disability, require medical documentation, require a special identification card or training documentation for the dog, or ask that the dog demonstrate its ability to perform the task.
Both Stark and the bill's Senate author, David Bullard, R-Durant, have said that posting a sign on business doors warning about the misdemeanor could be an effective deterrent against people trying to misrepresent their animal's function. If a business owner believed someone was violating the law, they could call the police, Bullard said.
"If a person misrepresents (their use of an animal), they would be asked to leave. If not, (the business) could call the police in to do that," he said.
Under Oklahoma law, someone convicted of a misdemeanor faces up to a year in county jail or a fine of no more than $500, or both.
The bill made it through the Legislature along mostly party-line votes, with some Republicans crossing over to vote against it. Although opponents recognized the issues that both business owners and service animal handlers have faced, they called for better education rather than simply hanging the threat of criminal misdemeanor over someone's head.
During debate in the House, Oklahoma City Democrat Forrest Bennett criticized the bill as helping one class of people at the disadvantage of another.
"I would love, in certain situations, to ask why a friend needs an AR-15 to walk into a Subway to order a sandwich. But I don't get to come up here and have my friends help me pass a law to make that easier for me to do. I just have to deal with that in public," he said, warning that the bill could also spur unintended lawsuits. "Right now, a business owner with a backbone can say, 'You and your service animal are causing a problem. We have a reason to ask you to leave.' That's a reality in Oklahoma right now."
Lawmakers must finish their annual work, including any veto overrides, by May 30.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma bill criminalizing false service animal claims is vetoed
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