Homeowner, City Battle Over Right To Keep Emotional Support Animal; Issue Revolves Around Medically Prescribed 900-Pound Quarterhorse Claimed To Be Essential For Autistic Daughter's Mental Health

In Kenai, Alaska, the Peninsula Clarion reports:

• An unpermitted horse in a tight residential area of Kenai is lowering property values according to neighbors, but is essential for an autistic woman’s emotional health, according to its owner.
  
  Kim Garretson said Major, the black 35-year-old quarterhorse she keeps on her land in Kenai’s McCann subdivision, keeps her autistic daughter, Cristal Barton, well.
  
  “The only reason we consider that she’s stable is because of him,” Garretson said of the horse.
  
  Kenai Municipal code prohibits keeping livestock on property smaller than 40,000 square feet — an area little less than an acre. Garretson lives with Barton on 10,000 square feet near 4th Street’s dead-end at the boundary fence of the Kenai Airport, a property bounded on two sides by closely-spaced neighboring houses. To legally keep Major here, Garretson must be granted a conditional use permit from the Kenai Planning and Zoning Commission, which denied the permit in a meeting on Oct. 14. Garretson will appeal their decision before the Kenai City Council in a hearing on Dec. 8. She said that if the permit is denied again, she will bring the question to court.
  
  “I’m going to continue the fight,” Garretson said. “He is an emotional support animal, and because of that, if they say no again, it’s discrimination because of what he is. Cristal has a right to enjoy her dwelling where she lives with her animal.”
  
  Because Major has been medically prescribed to Barton for her mental health, not permitting the horse to be kept on the property could be a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act, which prohibits “a refusal to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services, when such accommodations may be necessary to afford (disabled people) equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.”(1)
  
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  Garretson said Major was a rescue horse whom she found on Craigslist and brought from Kasilof in December 2010. Major was underfed when he arrived, weighing between 300 and 400 pounds, with ribs showing. After eight weeks of feeding, Garretson said, he had begun to approach his breed’s healthy weight of around 900 pounds.

For more, see Disabled Kenai resident, neighbors, city fight over horse kept in neighborhood yard.

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(1) In a recent case favorable to the party requesting the reasonable accommodation, a federal appeals court reinstated a lawsuit that a trial court dismissed involving a miniature horse used as an emotional support animal. Anderson v. City of Blue Ash, No. 14-3754 (6th Cir. August 14, 2015). From that ruling:

• While protecting public health and property values are central to the City's interests, Anderson has produced evidence that the presence of one miniature horse at her house will not create unsanitary conditions or devalue her neighbors' property, supported not only by her own testimony but by signed letters of support from her current neighbors. She also testified that she has retained a service to clean up animal waste, and ensure that unsanitary conditions will not reappear.
  
  As for the district court's assertion that, because Anderson lives in a residential area, "[a]llowing farm animals, such as miniature horses . . . in these areas fundamentally alters the zoning scheme," we have long since rejected the notion that making an exception to a zoning scheme to permit something that would normally be forbidden automatically amounts to a fundamental alteration. [...] Requiring public entities to make exceptions to their rules and zoning policies is exactly what the FHAA [Fair Housing Amendments Act] does. The fact that the City banned horses from residential property does not mean that any modification permitting a horse necessarily amounts to a fundamental alteration.

I wonder whether a court would apply the reasoning in a case involving a miniature horse to a situation involving a 900-pound quarterhorse.

See also, Big Win for Ohio Family’s Fight to Keep Little Horse.