Service dogs are able to help people with a wide variety of problems, from diabetes to seizure disorders to blindness. Whenever there’s a controversy over whether a service dog dog should be allowed inside a business, we frequently hear that an employee told the disabled person, “you’re not blind!” Recently in California, though, a blind man, his family, and his service dog visited a restaurant and were told that Dogs Are Not Allowed.
Normally, service dogs are allowed to go anywhere that their owners are, including taxis, stores, and restaurants. Technically, a business owner can ask an animal to leave, but only if the dog isn’t housebroken or is being disruptive in some other kind of doggy way.
When the family visited this Indian restaurant in South Sacramento, they were asked to leave. Well, the dog was. “No dog. Get out. Just get out,” he recounted to the TV station. They decided to investigate for themselves. Instead of attaching a camera to the same customer, they sent in their own blind guy/service dog team. They were asked to leave, but pushed back by quoting the relevant parts of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
It turns out that the restaurant’s owner and staff simply weren’t familiar with the laws surrounding service dogs, and didn’t know that there are circumstances under which dogs have to be allowed inside. That could be an expensive lesson: the kicked-out customer could have sued them for not allowing him to bring the dog inside.
Call Kurtis Investigates: Sacramento Restaurant Denies Blind Man’s Service Dog [CBS Sacramento]
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