A Fair Housing Defense reader sent in a question about emotional support animal medical verifications that I want to address. Because our industry has seen such an increase in the number of service and/or emotional support animal reasonable accommodation requests, my reader wanted to know if one way to curb potential abuse of the medical verification process might be to require health care providers to have the verification notarized.
As a lawyer for the management company/apartment owner, I am all for coming up with any solution which could help ensure that service and emotional support animals are appropriately permitted for our residents with a legitimate disability while finding a way to reject reasonable accommodation requests that come from residents who are not disabled and who simply wish to avoid pet rent or pet fees. As I have written in this space before, many of my clients are now pushing back against medical verifications that are purchased over the internet with a credit card following no legitimate medical evaluation.
That being said, I have not seen any case or guidance which would permit management to mandate that medical verifications be notarized. The Fair Housing Act and health care privacy laws limit what management can collect from our residents. Now, you could certainly request the verification be notarized (and/or have space for a notary on your reasonable accommodation form). It is possible that some medical professionals would indeed have the form (or their letter) notarized. But if a resident objected to the requirement for a notarized signature (and management denied the request solely because the medical verification lacked a notary) and filed a complaint, while I would absolutely do my best to defend the complaint, I am not sure we could mandate the notary requirement under current law. An interesting idea. But I think a best practice is to continue to review and evaluate all medical verifications to do our best to ensure it was not obtained from a less than legitimate source.
Hope that helps. Just A Thought.