How can a specifically discriminatory regulation be called "Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Air Travel"? It is after all discriminatory since you've chosen to single out an entire category of the disabled to certify their disability down to a letter of documentation from their medical provider in advance of their travel. The only way to make this right is to require this of all service dog users or of no service dog users. After all, Emotional Support Animals, by law, are NOT service animals. They don't have the training to do work or tasks to mitigate their handler's disability or even the requirement of basic public access manners.
If your fear is "fakers", what makes you think they'd all be hiding amongst the users of emotional support animals and psychiatric service dogs? Now that letters of documentation are required of these two groups, if "fakers" are a problem, they'll just move along to another class of invisible disability that doesn't require all the documentation such as medical alert. So I really don't even see a point in the requirement for documentation from users of psychiatric service dogs - since after all a psychiatric service dog IS a service dog and NOT an emotional support animal. If fakers are the problem, wouldn't it be better to institute a penalty for getting an animal into the passenger area that's not really a service animal instead of penalizing and discriminating against an entire class of the disabled?
Danetta Amschler
This is comment on Rule
Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Air Travel
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