Landlord Atlas

Can a landlord charge for a pet in Michigan, and what does the law require for an assistance animal?

Verified September 21, 2026 All Michigan topics →

Michigan has no pet-deposit statute and no pet-rent statute, so the general deposit rules do the work.

Cited to MCL 554.601 (a), (c), (d) and 20 more cited sources · Verified September 21, 2026

A refundable pet deposit is money returnable to the tenant on condition of returning the unit in the required condition, which makes it a security deposit, and it counts inside the one-and-a-half-month ceiling rather than on top of it. Money that genuinely is not returnable falls outside the deposit act, and Michigan has no general bar on non-refundable fees, so a non-refundable pet fee and monthly pet rent are lease terms with no ceiling. No lease has to state a pet policy and nothing fills the gap if it is silent, but a lease may not let the landlord change the agreement after it starts without the tenant's written consent, except for changes required by law, rules needed to protect health, safety or peaceful enjoyment on at least 30 days' notice, and a closed list of cost-driven rent increases that does not include pet money. Michigan has no assistance-animal statute at all: no state law defines an assistance or support animal, sets what a landlord may ask, or bars a charge in a tenancy. What the state has is a general duty to accommodate a person with a disability in housing unless that would impose an undue hardship, which does not apply to an owner-occupied two-family building or a room let in the lessor's own home, and a published appellate decision holding that a landlord must be allowed to test the reliability of a tenant's emotional support animal documentation in court. The state's service-animal charge bar and its two false-representation offenses all belong to public accommodations, not to rental housing.

Michigan pets & assistance animals at a glance

Which law governs The money and lease answers sit in two landlord-tenant acts: the Landlord-Tenant Act of 1972, sections 554.601 to 554.616, which defines a security deposit, caps it and limits what it may be used for, and the Truth in Renting Act of 1978, sections 554.631 to 554.641, which voids a closed list of lease provisions, including a clause letting the landlord change the agreement mid-term without the tenant's written consent. Michigan has no assistance-animal statute: the only state duty in housing is the general one in the Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act, section 37.1102, subsection 2, that a person shall accommodate a person with a disability in housing unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship, with the housing prohibitions at sections 37.1501 to 37.1507. The state's express service-animal rules, in section 750.502c of the penal code and in the voluntary identification act at sections 37.301 to 37.307, bind public accommodations and the state itself, not landlords. Local power over animals comes from the Dog Law of 1919 and is animal control, not tenancy terms.
Where in the state the answers differ The money and lease rules are statewide and unconditioned: the deposit act defines a rental unit to include apartment units, boarding houses, rooming houses, mobile home spaces and single and two-family dwellings, with no unit threshold and no owner-occupied exemption. The disability side is different. The housing prohibitions of the Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act do not apply to the rental of a housing accommodation in a building with accommodations for not more than 2 families living independently, if the owner or a member of the owner's immediate family lives in one of them, or to the rental of a room or rooms in a single housing dwelling where the lessor or a member of the lessor's immediate family lives there; immediate family means a spouse, parent, child or sibling (sections 37.1503 and 37.1501). That is narrower than the federal exemption for owner-occupied buildings of up to four units, so Michigan's own act binds owner-occupied three- and four-unit landlords whom the federal act lets alone. One point the statute does not settle: the exemption is written against the housing prohibition in section 502, while the duty to accommodate sits in article 1 at section 37.1102, subsection 2, and nothing in the text says whether that duty survives the exemption on its own. No Michigan decision read for this page answers it.
Which landlords are covered The money and lease rules bind every residential landlord. A landlord is the owner, lessor or sublessor of a rental unit or the property it is part of, or a person authorized to exercise any aspect of the management of the premises, including anyone who acts as a rental agent or receives rent; a rental unit is a structure or part of one used as a home, residence or sleeping unit, and the act says it includes apartment units, boarding houses, rooming houses, mobile home spaces and single and two-family dwellings (section 554.601). There is no unit threshold and no owner-occupied exemption on that side, and the Truth in Renting Act reaches the same agreements. The state's disability duty in housing is narrower, because the civil-rights act exempts the owner-occupied two-family building and the room let in the lessor's own home; whether that exemption also removes the duty to accommodate is an open question on the face of the statute, so the exemption is stated above rather than typed into this scope.
Pet deposit

Yes — no pet figure exists, but a pet deposit is a security deposit however it is named and counts inside the general deposit cap.

No Michigan statute mentions a pet deposit; the words pet deposit, pet rent, pet fee and household pet appear nowhere in the code, and no section of the landlord-tenant chapter uses the words animal, pet, dog, cat or breed. The answer comes out of the definition instead. A security deposit is a deposit, in any amount, paid by the tenant to be held for the term of the rental agreement or part of it, and includes any other amount of money or property returnable to the tenant on condition of return of the rental unit in the condition the rental agreement requires; the definition excludes only two things, an amount paid for an option to purchase and an amount paid for a membership in a cooperative housing association (section 554.601). A refundable pet deposit is money returnable on that condition, so it is a security deposit, it counts inside the one-and-a-half-month ceiling along with the rest of the deposit rather than on top of it, and it carries the act's rules on use, waiver and return. Money that is genuinely not returnable falls outside the act altogether, and Michigan has no general bar on non-refundable fees, so the labeling question is the whole game. Mobile home spaces are inside the definition of a rental unit, so the same ceiling is the answer on a park lot.

Refundability: A pet deposit is refundable on the same terms as any other security deposit, and may be used only to reimburse the landlord for actual damage to the rental unit or an ancillary facility that is the direct result of conduct not reasonably expected in the normal course of living in a dwelling, and to pay rent in arrears, rent due for the tenant's premature termination and unpaid utility bills (section 554.607). The act's requirements may not be waived by the parties except where the act itself allows it (section 554.606), and the Truth in Renting Act separately voids any lease provision under which the parties waive a right established by the deposit act.

The general deposit cap it sits against: A landlord may require a security deposit for each rental unit, and it 'shall not exceed 1 1/2 months' rent' (section 554.602). The cap has stood unamended since the act took effect on April 1, 1973. The deposits page carries the cap itself, the notice and inventory rules, the return deadlines and the remedies.
Pet rent and pet fees

Yes — no statute caps, authorizes or forbids pet rent or a pet fee.

Michigan sets no figure here and has no general non-refundable-fee bar for a pet fee to run through. The Truth in Renting Act's list of lease provisions that are void contains no fee clause at all: it bars habitability waivers, deposit-act waivers, discrimination that violates the state civil-rights acts, confessions of judgment, exculpation clauses, waivers of a jury trial or of notice, excessive attorney-fee clauses, security interests in the tenant's property, unannotated rent acceleration, waivers of eviction rights, releases from the duty to mitigate, unilateral mid-term alteration, violations of the state consumer-protection act and powers of attorney. So pet rent and a non-refundable pet fee are lease terms, bounded only by the deposit ceiling where the money is returnable.

Monthly pet rent: Unaddressed. No Michigan statute mentions pet rent, and there is no cap and no reasonableness standard. A monthly pet charge is a lease term. One limit is worth knowing: a lease may not let the landlord change the agreement after it starts without the tenant's written consent, and the three permitted adjustments on notice are a closed list that does not include pet money, so pet rent cannot lawfully be added mid-lease by a clause reserving that power.

A one-time pet fee: Unaddressed as such. A one-time pet charge that is returnable to the tenant on condition of returning the unit in the required condition is a security deposit and counts inside the one-and-a-half-month ceiling. A genuinely non-refundable pet fee is outside the deposit act, because the definition reaches only amounts returnable to the tenant, and no other Michigan statute reaches it.
Pet policy in the lease, and changing it mid-tenancy

No — but a written-rules or mid-term-change provision would govern a pet rule the landlord adopts.

No Michigan statute requires a lease to say whether pets are allowed, none supplies an answer when the lease is silent, and none limits how many animals a tenant may keep. The state's only mandatory lease statements are the landlord's name and notice address and the Truth in Renting notice, in type no smaller than 12 point, telling the reader that Michigan law establishes rights and obligations for parties to rental agreements (section 554.634); neither mentions animals. What the law does control is change after signing, set out above. Michigan also has no pet mandate for any class of housing: the State Housing Development Authority's general rules contain no animal term at all, so the state is not among those that require publicly financed housing to accept pets.

Changing the rule mid-tenancy: A rental agreement may not include a provision letting the landlord alter a provision of the agreement after it has begun without the written consent of the tenant, except that the agreement may provide for three kinds of adjustment on not less than 30 days' written notice: changes required by federal, state or local law or regulation; changes in rules relating to the property that are required to protect the physical health, safety or peaceful enjoyment of tenants and guests; and increases in the rent to cover higher property taxes, utility charges or insurance premiums. A clause that violates the section is void (section 554.633, subsections 1 and 3). A pet rule can plausibly sit inside the health, safety and peaceful-enjoyment exception; pet money cannot, because the rent-adjustment list is closed and does not include it.
Breed, size and weight restrictions

Yes.

Michigan law neither restricts nor protects a landlord's breed, size or weight rule, and it neither preempts nor authorizes a local breed rule in housing. The word breed appears in twenty-four sections of the code, every one of them in the animal-industry and dog statutes, the horse-racing act, two penal-code animal sections or a licensing provision where it describes growing a plant; none is in a housing, landlord-tenant, civil-rights or insurance chapter. The Dog Law of 1919 has no breed clause; what it has is authority for cities, villages, townships and counties to run animal control and dog licensing, which is a power over animals and not over a lease. There is no assistance-animal breed carve-out because the state's disability act contains no animal term at all, and no publicly financed housing mandate. One old provision is often mistaken for a pet rule and is not: the Housing Law of Michigan forbids keeping a horse, cow, calf, swine, sheep, goat, chickens, geese or ducks in a dwelling, which is a livestock rule from 1917 and names no companion animal.
Assistance animals: the state instrument and who it binds

Only through the state fair-housing act's reasonable-accommodation duty, the sole state instrument reaching assistance animals in housing; no state text sets a documentation standard. The operative rules are statutory. State law incorporates a federal statute or codified regulation by reference.

Michigan has no assistance-animal statute. The state duty in housing is the general one: the opportunity to obtain housing without discrimination because of a disability is a civil right, and a person shall accommodate a person with a disability for purposes of housing unless that person demonstrates that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship (section 37.1102, subsections 1 and 2). The phrase in the statute is shall accommodate rather than reasonable accommodation, which is why the duty is easy to miss. Alongside it, an owner or other person engaging in a real estate transaction may not, because of a disability, refuse to engage in the transaction or discriminate in the terms, conditions or privileges of a real estate transaction or in the furnishing of facilities or services in connection with one, and real property for that purpose expressly includes a mobile home and a mobile home park (sections 37.1501 and 37.1502). Whether a particular animal must be allowed, and on what documentation, is worked out case by case under that duty and under federal law; the state has no animal-specific text, no presumption and no refusal grounds of its own. The only Michigan rules that name a service animal are the penal code's duties on public accommodations and a voluntary state identification program, and neither binds a landlord. A published Michigan Court of Appeals decision has held that in an eviction over an emotional support animal the trial court must act as a gatekeeper of evidence and let the landlord test the reliability of the tenant's documentation; that is a rule of evidence, not a documentation statute.

Who it binds: The housing prohibitions of the Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act do not apply to the rental of a housing accommodation in a building containing accommodations for not more than 2 families living independently of each other, if the owner or a member of the owner's immediate family resides in one of them, or to the rental of a room or rooms in a single housing dwelling where the lessor or a member of the lessor's immediate family resides; immediate family means a spouse, parent, child or sibling (sections 37.1503 and 37.1501). Michigan's exemption is narrower than the federal one, which reaches owner-occupied buildings of up to four units, so the state act binds owner-occupied three- and four-unit landlords the federal act exempts. The statute leaves one question open: the exemption is written against the housing prohibition, while the duty to accommodate sits in the act's first article, and nothing says whether that duty stands on its own where the exemption applies. No Michigan decision read for this page decides it, so a landlord in that position should not assume either answer. The federal Fair Housing Act binds separately on its own terms, and the federal section of the 50-state page carries it.
What counts as an assistance animal Michigan defines no animal term for housing at all. The phrases assistance animal and support animal appear nowhere in the code, and emotional support appears twice, in a courtroom-support provision and in foster-care definitions, neither of them about housing. Every animal definition Michigan does have is a service-animal definition taken from federal law by reference and repeated across four separate acts: a service animal means that term as the federal disability regulation defines it, plus a miniature horse individually trained to do work or perform tasks for a person with a disability, and a person with a disability means that term as the federal disability act and its regulation define it (sections 750.502c, 752.61, 37.301 and 287.291). Those are public-accommodation, criminal and licensing provisions, not housing rules. The one Michigan-made definition that governs housing is animal-neutral: for the housing article, a disability is a determinable physical or mental characteristic that substantially limits one or more major life activities and is unrelated to the individual's ability to acquire, rent or maintain property, judged with or without accommodation, and the term also covers a history of such a characteristic and being regarded as having one (section 37.1103). The 1937 travel-aids act uses a different term again, a dog guide, meaning a dog in harness formally trained and used by a blind person as a travel aid.
Documentation a landlord may request, and what a certifier must meet

No state text sets a documentation standard for an assistance animal in housing.

Michigan sets no documentation rule for housing of any kind. There is no list of questions a landlord may ask, no class of professional who must sign, no telehealth or in-person rule, no minimum relationship with the patient, no annual re-evaluation, no clause about internet certificates or registrations, no form rule, no bar on asking for medical records, no vaccination rule and no duty on the landlord to answer a request at all, in writing or otherwise. The phrase therapeutic relationship appears nowhere in the code, and the requirement of one that some summaries attribute to Michigan belongs to another state. The state places no duty on the professional who writes a letter and provides no licensing consequence for a false one. The nearest thing to a documentation clause is not a landlord's right: to get the state's optional service-animal identification and patch, the applicant must give the civil rights department a signed affidavit that the animal has been trained as a service animal, and documentation from an appropriate health care or rehabilitation professional that the individual needs a service animal because of a disability (section 37.303). The patch is voluntary, no tenant needs one, and holding one or not holding one decides nothing in a tenancy. What Michigan does have is judicial: a published Court of Appeals decision holds that a landlord must be allowed to challenge the reliability of a tenant's emotional support animal documentation under the rules of evidence, and that a court errs by refusing to consider that challenge.
Charges for an assistance animal

Under state law, yes — no state text bars a charge for an assistance animal; the federal rules alone govern it.

No Michigan statute bars a charge for an assistance animal in a tenancy, for a trained service animal or for an animal that provides emotional support. Michigan does have an express charge bar, and it is easy to mistake for a housing rule: a public accommodation may not charge a person with a disability accompanied by a service animal a fee not charged to other patrons, may not charge such a fee to a trainer, and may not require a surcharge or other requirements not applied to people accompanied by pets, on pain of a misdemeanor (section 750.502c, subsections 11 and 13). That section runs entirely on the federal definition of a public accommodation, a closed list of commercial and service establishments open to the public, and it never uses the words housing, dwelling, landlord, tenant, lease or rent; its vocabulary is patrons, premises, facility and staff. A dwelling let to a tenant is not on that list, so the bar does not reach a tenancy, and its definition of a service animal excludes an animal that only provides emotional support in any case. The same section is the only place Michigan speaks to damage: it says a public accommodation that normally charges people for damage may charge a person with a disability for damage caused by the service animal, and there is no equivalent sentence for a tenancy, where animal damage is handled by the deposit rules and the lease. What actually limits a Michigan landlord is the general duty to accommodate a person with a disability in housing unless it would impose an undue hardship, and the federal rules, which the federal section of the 50-state page carries.
Damage caused by an assistance animal No state text addresses damage caused by an assistance animal in housing.
Misrepresenting an assistance animal

None in housing — the only offense is scoped to public accommodations and does not reach housing.

Michigan has two offenses and neither reaches a landlord. The first says a person shall not falsely represent that he or she is in possession of a service animal, or a service animal in training, in any public place, and a knowing violation is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than 90 days, a fine of not more than $500, community service for not more than 30 days, or more than one of those (sections 752.62 and 752.63). The offense is limited by its own words to a public place; a false accommodation request made to a landlord, or a purchased letter handed in with a lease application, is not a representation made in a public place. The second punishes lying to the state rather than to a landlord: knowingly or willingly submitting a false or fraudulent affidavit to obtain the voluntary state service-animal identification and patch is a misdemeanor with the same ladder (section 37.307). Both run on the federal definition of a service animal, so neither can reach an animal that only provides emotional support, in any setting. There is no Michigan offense, civil action or licensing consequence for the person who writes or sells a false assistance-animal letter. A landlord who believes a request is not genuine has the ordinary civil route, and a published Court of Appeals decision confirms that the reliability of the documentation may be challenged in court.

Enforcement: Both offenses are ordinary misdemeanors prosecuted by the state, and both route complaints through the civil rights department's existing telephone complaint line, which may refer an alleged violation to the appropriate law enforcement agency (sections 752.64 and 37.305).
Can cities add their own rules

State law says nothing either way about local pet rules in housing.

Michigan neither preempts nor authorizes local rules about pets in rental housing. Cities and villages hold general home rule, with power to adopt resolutions and ordinances relating to their municipal concerns, property and government, subject to the constitution and law, and there is no state pets-in-housing statute for a local rule to conflict with. Neither landlord-tenant act contains a preemption, supersession, uniformity or occupied-field clause, and neither mentions a county, city, village, township or ordinance; the only non-waiver clauses in them run between landlord and tenant, not between the state and its municipalities. The animal title runs the other way and grants local power, but over animals rather than over leases: a city, village or township may adopt an animal control ordinance regulating licensing, payment of claims and enforcement, and a county board may establish an animal control agency with jurisdiction where a local ordinance does not exist. That is a police power over the keeping and licensing of animals, not a power to write a landlord's pet terms, which is why it is stated here rather than typed as a grant. One narrow preemption exists and is not a landlord rule: notwithstanding any law or ordinance to the contrary, a service animal is not subject to any licensing fee where it is used by a person with a disability or owned by an entity that trains service animals. No Michigan city ordinance on pets in rental housing has been examined for this page, so nothing is stated about one in either direction.
Housing classes with their own pet rule No manufactured-home park, publicly financed, public-housing or senior-housing rule departs from the answers above
Insurance and dog breeds No statute restricts an insurer's use of dog breed in underwriting
How state law refers to the federal rules Michigan's dependence on federal law here is unusually complete. Every animal-and-disability term in Michigan law is defined by reference to a federal definition rather than written out: a service animal means that term as the federal disability regulation defines it, plus a miniature horse trained to do work or perform tasks; a place of public accommodation and a public accommodation mean those terms as the federal disability act and the same regulation define them; and a person with a disability means that term as the federal act and its regulation define it. Those borrowings are repeated verbatim in four separate acts, the penal code's public-accommodation section, the false-representation act, the voluntary identification act and the dog-licensing fee exemption, and a fifth act borrows the penal code's definition at one remove. None of them says as amended and none carries a date, but the dependency is total: if the federal definition changes, every Michigan animal provision changes with it. In housing the dependence is larger still, because Michigan has no animal rule of its own and a tenant's protection rests on the general state duty to accommodate together with the federal act. No federal notice or joint statement is incorporated anywhere in Michigan law. The federal rules and their current standing are on the federal section of the 50-state page; this page states only what Michigan's own law says.
Changes already signed into law No signed act is waiting to change these answers
Leading court decisions Riverbrook v Fabode, No. 349065 (Mich Ct App, Sept. 17, 2020), marked for publication; Macomb Circuit Court No. 2018-000274-AV (residential setting; bears on assistance-animal documentation): In a landlord's eviction of a tenant who kept a dog the lease's pet prohibition barred, the district and circuit courts abandoned their roles as gatekeepers of evidence under the rule governing expert testimony and refused to let the landlord challenge the validity of the documents the tenant offered to support his need for an emotional support animal. That was error, and the order affirming the eviction decision was vacated and the case remanded. The court decided the case under the federal Fair Housing Act's reasonable-accommodation provision rather than under Michigan's own disability act, and it observed that landlords have felt the fallout of tenants buying certification online to get around pet prohibitions in their leases. A Michigan Supreme Court entry in the same matter, dated January 27, 2021 and captioned as an order, has not been read, so no subsequent history is stated here.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Michigan Pet & Assistance Animal Laws (verified September 21, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/pets/michigan/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Michigan assistance-animal documentation at a glance

The state's instrument sets no documentation standard, so every row below reads not stated unless a slot is addressed elsewhere in state law; the federal rules further down this page apply on top. The full text of each slot, with its section, is in the table above.

Slot What the state's text says
Who may certify, and on what test Not stated
The certifier's minimum relationship period Not stated
Telehealth Not stated
Online registration or certificate Not stated
Form Not stated
Medical records Not stated
Written answer from the landlord Not stated
Annual re-evaluation Not stated
Proof of vaccination or licensing Not stated

Federal law on pets and assistance animals, in every state

The federal layer for the pets and assistance-animals topic, carried once for the whole site. It is a dated history rather than a single rule: the Fair Housing Act's accommodation duty has not changed since 1988 and the regulation under it has never contained the word animal, while the HUD guidance that most writing on this subject still quotes was withdrawn in September 2025, permanently rescinded in May 2026, and replaced by an enforcement position that governs HUD's own cause determinations and nothing else. Every row names who it binds, and most of the rows that carry real figures bind only federally assisted, public or rural-development housing. No state record restates these rows; a state record says only where its own law references or extends them. Each row below says who it binds before it says what it does. The full text of each row, with its citations, is on the 50-state page.

Notes and caveats

Common questions: Michigan pets & assistance animals

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Can a landlord charge a pet deposit in Michigan, and is there a limit?
Yes — no pet figure exists, but a pet deposit is a security deposit however it is named and counts inside the general deposit cap. No Michigan statute mentions a pet deposit; the words pet deposit, pet rent, pet fee and household pet appear nowhere in the code, and no section of the landlord-tenant chapter uses the words animal, pet, dog, cat or breed.
Can a landlord charge pet rent or a non-refundable pet fee in Michigan?
Yes — no statute caps, authorizes or forbids pet rent or a pet fee. Michigan sets no figure here and has no general non-refundable-fee bar for a pet fee to run through.
Does a Michigan lease have to state a pet policy?
No — but a written-rules or mid-term-change provision would govern a pet rule the landlord adopts. No Michigan statute requires a lease to say whether pets are allowed, none supplies an answer when the lease is silent, and none limits how many animals a tenant may keep.
Can a Michigan landlord restrict pets by breed, size or weight?
Yes. Michigan law neither restricts nor protects a landlord's breed, size or weight rule, and it neither preempts nor authorizes a local breed rule in housing.
Does Michigan have its own assistance-animal law for rentals?
Only through the state fair-housing act's reasonable-accommodation duty, the sole state instrument reaching assistance animals in housing; no state text sets a documentation standard. The operative rules are statutory.
What documentation can a Michigan landlord ask for when a tenant requests an assistance animal?
No state text sets a documentation standard for an assistance animal in housing. Michigan sets no documentation rule for housing of any kind.
Can a Michigan landlord charge a pet deposit or pet rent for an emotional support animal?
Under state law, yes — no state text bars a charge for an assistance animal; the federal rules alone govern it. No Michigan statute bars a charge for an assistance animal in a tenancy, for a trained service animal or for an animal that provides emotional support.
What is the penalty for falsely claiming an assistance animal in Michigan?
None in housing — the only offense is scoped to public accommodations and does not reach housing. Michigan has two offenses and neither reaches a landlord.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the Michigan Compiled Laws on the Legislature's own site, whose pages carry the currency line 'Michigan Compiled Laws Complete Through PA 91 of 2026'. Sections 554.601, 554.601c, 554.602, 554.606, 554.607, 554.632, 554.633 and 554.634 were read in full with their History lines, together with the act-level indexes of the Landlord-Tenant Act of 1972 and the Truth in Renting Act of 1978, which list every section and catchline and show that neither act carries a preemption clause. The Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act was read in full at sections 102, 103 and 501 to 507, and the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act was read for any animal term. Sections 37.301 to 37.307, the voluntary service-animal identification act, and sections 750.502c, 750.50a, 752.51 to 752.54 and 752.61 to 752.64 were read in full, as were sections 287.289a, 287.290, 287.291 and 125.479 and the act-level indexes of the Dog Law of 1919 and the Dangerous Animals act of 1988. Twenty terms were run over the whole code on the Legislature's own full-text search, which lists every hit by section number so a negative can be stated section by section rather than counted. The Public Act rolls for 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 were read in full, and the enrolled text of 2024 Public Act 179, the act on the credit line of the security-deposit definition, was read and compared word for word with the section as published: the definition moved from paragraph (e) to paragraph (d) and 'his or her' became 'the landlord's', with every operative word unchanged. The 2025-2026 bill files were searched for assistance animal, support animal, emotional support, pet deposit and service animal, and each of the eleven service-animal bills was read. Five administrative rule sets were read in full as the official documents published by the state's administrative rules service: the Civil Rights Commission's rules of practice, its organization and procedure rules whose last entry is dated effective March 12, 2026, its notice rule, the State Housing Development Authority's general rules and the manufactured-housing rules. The Michigan Constitution was read as published by the Legislative Service Bureau for the home-rule article. The state appellate opinion archive was searched for Michigan housing decisions on service and emotional support animals, and Riverbrook v Fabode was read in full from the Judicial Branch's own copy of the opinion.

What was read to state each absence on this page: