Landlord Atlas

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

Verified September 21, 2026 All North Carolina topics →

North Carolina is one of the few states whose law says plainly that a landlord may charge a pet fee: the statute allows a reasonable, nonrefundable fee for pets kept on the premises, with no dollar figure, no cap, and no court decision saying what reasonable means.

Cited to N.C. Gen. Stat. § 42-53 and 26 more cited sources · Verified September 21, 2026

A refundable pet deposit is different, because it counts as security and sits inside the ordinary deposit ceiling of two weeks' rent week to week, a month and a half month to month, and two months for longer terms. The lease does not have to say anything about pets, nothing limits breed, size or weight, and there is no rule about changing a pet policy mid-tenancy. But the fee stops at a service animal. A person with a disability has a statutory right to keep a service animal on any premises they lease or rent, no landlord is exempt from it, and charging any fee for a service animal is a Class 3 misdemeanor, as is disguising an animal as a service animal. North Carolina law does not use the words emotional support animal anywhere, so a claim about an animal kept for emotional support rests on the general duty to make reasonable accommodations in rules and policies, a duty that does not apply to an owner-occupied building of four units or fewer, or to a room let in the owner's own house. The pet-fee and deposit rules themselves reach only landlords in the business of renting, and never a single-room rental. Dogs are regulated by cities and counties, not by the state.

North Carolina pets & assistance animals at a glance

Which law governs Three separate bodies of law meet on this page and they bind different landlords. The money rules are in article 6 of chapter 42, the Tenant Security Deposit Act: section 42-53 expressly allows a reasonable, nonrefundable pet fee, section 42-51 caps the security deposit and lists the eight things it may be used for, section 42-52 sets the accounting deadlines, and section 42-56 limits the whole article to persons in the business of renting or managing residential dwelling units, excluding single rooms. The lease and habitability rules are in article 5 of the same chapter, which has its own and wider scope clause. The assistance-animal answer is in chapter 168, where section 168-4.2 gives a person with a disability the right to keep a service animal on any premises they lease, rent or use, section 168-4.3 provides an optional free state registration, section 168-4.4 bars any extra compensation for the animal and section 168-4.5 makes both disguising an animal and charging for a service animal a Class 3 misdemeanor. Beside that sits the State Fair Housing Act at chapter 41A, whose section 41A-4 carries the duty to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services, and whose section 41A-6 exempts several kinds of small landlord. Animal control belongs to cities and counties.
Where in the state the answers differ North Carolina never adopted the uniform residential landlord-tenant act, and its rules reach three different sets of landlords. The service-animal right in chapter 168, the bar on extra compensation and the Class 3 misdemeanor bind every landlord with no exemption of any kind: no unit threshold, no owner-occupied carve-out and no in-the-business test. The pet-fee authorization and the deposit caps in article 6 of chapter 42 reach only persons, firms or corporations engaged in the business of renting or managing residential dwelling units, excluding single rooms, on a weekly, monthly or annual basis (section 42-56), so a landlord who is not in that business, and any single-room rental, falls outside them. The reasonable-accommodation duty in the State Fair Housing Act does not apply to a building with housing for not more than four families where the lessor or a family member lives in one of them, to a room or rooms let in a private house where the lessor or a family member lives there, to certain religious and charitable organizations, to private clubs not open to the public, to single-sex dormitory property as to sex, or to commercial real estate (section 41A-6). The practical result is that in an owner-occupied fourplex the state accommodation duty falls away while the service-animal right and the criminal penalty do not.
Which landlords are covered Every residential landlord is inside at least one of the three regimes, and which one decides the answer. The service-animal right and the bar on charging for it bind every landlord without exception. The pet-fee and deposit rules bind only landlords in the business of renting or managing residential dwelling units, and never a single-room rental, because that is what the article's own application clause says (section 42-56); a landlord outside it is not forbidden to charge a pet fee, but has no statutory authorization for one and no statutory deposit ceiling either. The reasonable-accommodation duty in the State Fair Housing Act has its own list of exemptions, headed by a building with housing for no more than four families where the lessor or a family member lives in one of them, and a room let in the owner's own house (section 41A-6). The lease and habitability rules in article 5 of chapter 42 reach a dwelling unit within the state, excluding vacation rentals, dwellings furnished without charge or rent, and, since March 19, 2023, transient lodging in an inn, hotel, motel, recreational vehicle park or campground, which the inns statutes govern instead.
Pet deposit

Yes — a pet deposit is allowed, with no ceiling of its own.

North Carolina has no pet-deposit category at all. What it has is an express authorization of a fee: notwithstanding the deposit provisions, the landlord may charge a reasonable, nonrefundable fee for pets kept by the tenant on the premises (section 42-53). There is no dollar figure, no formula and no cross-reference, and no North Carolina court has ever said what reasonable means here. A refundable pet deposit is a different thing: it is security, so it counts inside the ceiling in section 42-51, subsection (b), and it carries the whole deposit scheme. That scheme allows the deposit to be used only for eight listed things, none of them a pet head, so pet damage is claimed as damage to the premises; it requires the deposit to sit in a trust account or be bonded with notice of its location to the tenant within thirty days of the start of the term; it requires an itemized statement of damage and the balance within thirty days of the end of the tenancy, or an interim accounting at thirty days and a final one within sixty days where the claim cannot be worked out in time; and it lets a tenant sue, voids the landlord's right to keep any part of the deposit on willful noncompliance and allows attorney's fees. One warning belongs with the fee: it may not be charged for a service animal, and charging it is a criminal offense, which is set out under assistance animals below.

Refundability: The statute's pet charge is a fee and is expressly nonrefundable; it sits outside the deposit and outside the ceiling. A pet deposit that is genuinely refundable is not that fee: it is security, so it counts inside the ceiling and carries the ordinary return rules, and a landlord may not keep any part of it for normal wear and tear or more than actual damages.

The general deposit cap it sits against: The security deposit may not exceed two weeks' rent where the tenancy is week to week, one and one-half months' rent where it is month to month, and two months' rent for terms longer than month to month, and the deposit must be fully accounted for (section 42-51, subsection (b)). The security-deposits page carries that ceiling and its machinery.
Pet rent and pet fees

Yes — pet rent or a pet fee may be charged, and no statute caps it.

North Carolina is one of the few states whose statute expressly allows a nonrefundable pet fee, and it sets no ceiling on it. There is no pet-rent statute, no disclosure duty and no general bar on nonrefundable fees for a pet charge to run through: the word nonrefundable appears in the landlord-tenant chapter only in the pet-fee section, where it permits rather than forbids. The chapter's authorized-fees section is not a closed list of everything a landlord may charge, and it says so: its own definition of administrative fees excludes out-of-pocket expenses, litigation costs and other fees, so a pet fee is governed by the pet-fee section and not by it. Two of its rules still touch a pet owner. Any lease provision contrary to that section is against the public policy of the state and is void and unenforceable. And since July 1, 2025, where a lease requires the tenant to carry insurance, which is a common indirect pet charge, the tenant may not be required to use a designated carrier or agent, and the landlord may charge the actual cost of obtaining the coverage plus an administrative fee of no more than fifty dollars a year, and only where the tenant fails to show proof of coverage within three business days of a request. One drafting quirk is worth explaining rather than quoting: the pet-fee section opens by saying notwithstanding the provisions of this section, although it is itself a single sentence; in context it means notwithstanding the deposit scheme in the rest of the article, which is how the ceiling on deposits and the freedom to charge a fee fit together.

A one-time pet fee: A one-time pet fee is expressly allowed and expressly nonrefundable, and the only standard is that it be reasonable (section 42-53). Nothing makes it a security deposit, nothing caps it and nothing requires it to be disclosed in any particular way.
Pet policy in the lease, and changing it mid-tenancy

No — no statute requires a lease to state a pet policy, and no written-rules provision governs one.

North Carolina requires nothing and supplies nothing. No statute requires a lease to say whether pets are allowed, sets a default when the lease is silent, limits the number, size or species of animals, or bars a particular pet condition. There is also no statutory standard for adopting or changing house rules during a tenancy, so a mid-term pet rule stands or falls on the lease itself. The landlord-tenant chapter uses the word animal nowhere and the word pet only in the fee section. No publicly financed or income-restricted housing program in the General Statutes carries a pet or animal obligation, and there is no manufactured-home community pet provision either.
Breed, size and weight restrictions

Yes.

No North Carolina statute limits, authorizes or preempts a breed, size or weight restriction in a tenancy, and there is no breed carve-out for an assistance animal. The word breed appears nowhere in the landlord-tenant chapter, the State Fair Housing Act, either disability chapter or the insurance chapter, and a code-wide search returns only six sections, all about auctioneers, agriculture, dogs used in hunting, cruelty to animals and false registration of animals. Breed law in North Carolina belongs to local government rather than to the state: the dangerous-dog article expressly preserves a city's or county's own program for the control of dangerous dogs, and a city may by ordinance regulate, restrict or prohibit the keeping of domestic animals, dogs and cats included. None of that reaches a landlord's own lease terms.
Assistance animals: the state instrument and who it binds

Yes — a disability-title housing right, with no documentation rule. The operative rules are statutory.

Every person with a disability has the right to be accompanied by a service animal trained to assist with his or her specific disability in the places the disability chapter lists, and has the right to keep the service animal on any premises the person leases, rents or uses (section 168-4.2, subsection (a)). The person qualifies on showing a state registration tag or on a showing that the animal is being trained or has been trained as a service animal. An animal in training may be taken into those places for training when accompanied by its trainer and wearing a collar and leash, harness or cape identifying it as in training, and the trainer is liable for damage the animal causes on a public conveyance or at a public facility (subsection (b)). Nothing in the chapter attaches a documentation rule to the housing right. Beside that right, and separately from it, the State Fair Housing Act makes it an unlawful discriminatory housing practice to refuse to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices or services when those accommodations may be necessary to a handicapped person's equal use and enjoyment of a dwelling, and to refuse to permit reasonable modifications at the tenant's expense subject to a restoration condition (section 41A-4, subsection (f)). That clause, not the disability chapter, is where a claim about an animal kept for emotional support would have to live in North Carolina, and it carries no animal text, no documentation rule and no charge rule of its own. The Persons with Disabilities Protection Act does not reach housing at all; it covers employment, public accommodations, public services and education.

Who it binds: Every landlord, for the right itself. The service-animal right, the bar on extra compensation and the criminal penalty in chapter 168 carry no exemption of any kind: no unit threshold, no owner-occupied carve-out and no requirement that the landlord be in the business of renting. The second layer is narrower. The reasonable-accommodation duty in the State Fair Housing Act does not apply to a building with housing accommodations for not more than four families living independently where the lessor or a family member lives in one of them, to a room or rooms let in a private house that is not a boarding house where the lessor or a family member lives there, to certain religious and charitable organizations, to private clubs not open to the public, to single-sex dormitory property as to sex, or to commercial real estate (section 41A-6, subsection (a)), and it preserves a defense where a tenancy would be a direct threat to the health or safety of others or would result in substantial physical damage to the property of others (subsection (b)). The money rules are narrower again, reaching only persons in the business of renting or managing residential dwelling units and never a single room (section 42-56). So in an owner-occupied fourplex the state accommodation duty drops away while the service-animal right and the criminal penalty stay.
What counts as an assistance animal North Carolina does not define service animal anywhere in the disability chapter. The qualifier is the phrase the right itself uses: a service animal trained to assist the person with his or her specific disability (section 168-4.2, subsection (a)). Both ways of qualifying are training routes, either a state registration tag, whose rules must require that the animal be trained or be in training, or a showing that the animal is being trained or has been trained as a service animal. 'Person with a disability' borrows the definition in the Persons with Disabilities Protection Act (section 168-1). The only statutory definition of a neighboring term sits in the criminal code, in an offense committed against the animal rather than a housing rule: an assistance animal is an animal that is trained and may be used to assist a person with a disability, and the term is not limited to a dog (section 14-163.1). A third and unrelated definition covers animals owned by the state or a local government that perform law enforcement or public-safety work, and says on its face that it is for its own section only. The words emotional support animal and support animal appear nowhere in the General Statutes, so North Carolina has no state definition of one and no state rule about one. The State Fair Housing Act uses 'handicapping condition', defined as a physical or mental impairment substantially limiting a major life activity, a record of such an impairment, or being regarded as having one, and excluding current illegal drug use (section 41A-3).
Documentation a landlord may request, and what a certifier must meet

Nothing sets out what a landlord may ask. What the statute does say is how a person qualifies: on showing a state registration tag, or on a showing that the animal is being trained or has been trained as a service animal (section 168-4.2, subsection (a)). Because the second route stands on its own, a landlord may not insist on the tag.

North Carolina has no documentation rules. No statute and no located rule says what a landlord may ask for, who may write anything, how long any treating relationship must have run, what an online registration proves, whether a form may be required, or whether and how quickly a landlord must answer a request. What exists instead is an optional and free state registration: the Department of Health and Human Services issues registrations to a person with a disability, or to a person training an animal, the rules must require that the animal be trained or be in training, the certification and registration need not be renewed while the animal is serving or training with the person, and no fee may be charged for the application, the registration, the tag or a replacement (section 168-4.3). The registration is one way of qualifying and not the only one, because the right is also established by a showing that the animal is being trained or has been trained, so a landlord cannot demand the tag. The rules the section directs the department to adopt could not be located in the administrative code: the four departmental chapters most likely to hold them carry no mention of a service animal, a guide dog or an assistance animal.
Charges for an assistance animal

Under state law, yes — the state bar reaches only a trained service, guide, hearing or assistance dog, or a certified animal; the federal rules still govern an emotional support animal; the bar is an express no-extra-charge clause, in a statute.

Neither a person with a disability accompanied by a service animal, nor a person training one, may be required to pay any extra compensation for the animal (section 168-4.4). The bar reaches housing because the right it protects is placed expressly on any premises the person leases, rents or uses, and because charging any fee for the use of a service animal is separately made a criminal offense. The pairing is the most important thing a North Carolina landlord can know: the same statute book that expressly allows a reasonable nonrefundable pet fee makes charging that fee for a service animal a Class 3 misdemeanor, and no landlord is exempt from that. The bar does not reach an animal kept for emotional support. It hangs on the words service animal, whose only qualifier is training, and North Carolina's statutes do not use the terms emotional support animal or support animal at all. A tenant with such an animal must rely on the general duty to make reasonable accommodations in rules and policies, which has its own exemptions and carries no charge rule of its own.

The definition it hangs on: Every person with a disability has the right to be accompanied by 'a service animal trained to assist the person with his or her specific disability' and to keep it on any premises the person leases, rents, or uses, qualifying on a state registration tag 'or upon a showing that the animal is being trained or has been trained as a service animal' (G.S. § 168-4.2(a)); the registration rules must 'require that the animal be trained or be in training as a service animal' (G.S. § 168-4.3).

Remedy: Charging is a crime, not merely a void term. It is unlawful to deprive a person with a disability, or a person training a service animal, of any right granted by sections 168-4.2 through 168-4.4, or to charge any fee for the use of the service animal, and a violation is a Class 3 misdemeanor (section 168-4.5). The statute states the class and no figure; the fine for a Class 3 misdemeanor sits in the general sentencing statutes and is not stated here.
Damage caused by an assistance animal

The tenant is liable for damage the animal causes like any other tenant, by express words.

Parity is stated in the same sentence that bars the charge. The person has all the responsibilities and liabilities that any applicable law places on a person who owns or uses an animal, including liability for any damage done by the animal (section 168-4.4), and a trainer is liable for damage the animal causes on a public conveyance or at a public facility or other listed place (section 168-4.2, subsection (b)). Inside a tenancy the ordinary deposit rules apply with no animal-specific gloss: damage to the premises is one of the eight things a security deposit may be used for, and nothing may be withheld for normal wear and tear or beyond actual damages.
Misrepresenting an assistance animal

An offense or sanction that reaches a misrepresentation made to obtain housing: a misdemeanor, reaching the person claiming the animal and a landlord who denies or interferes with the right.

It is unlawful to disguise an animal as a service animal or a service animal in training, and a violation is a Class 3 misdemeanor (section 168-4.5). The offense reaches housing because the rights it protects are expressly rights on premises a person leases or rents. No prior warning is required. There is no provider-side offense of any kind: nothing in North Carolina penalizes a professional who writes a letter, and no licensing sanction is attached, which fits a state whose law never contemplates a letter at all. One neighboring offense is often confused with this one and is not it: assaulting a law enforcement agency animal, an assistance animal or a search and rescue animal is an offense committed against the animal, running from a Class 2 misdemeanor for taunting or obstructing up to a Class H felony for willfully killing, with mandatory restitution for veterinary and medical costs, replacement and retraining, temporary mobility services and lost wages.

The landlord-side offense: The same sentence that penalizes a false claim penalizes the landlord. It is unlawful to deprive a person with a disability, or a person training a service animal, of any right granted by sections 168-4.2 through 168-4.4, or of any right or privilege granted the general public with respect to being accompanied by animals, or to charge any fee for the use of the service animal; a violation is a Class 3 misdemeanor (section 168-4.5). North Carolina is one of the few states that makes the landlord side an offense in the same words as the tenant side.

Who enforces it: Prosecution as a Class 3 misdemeanor, the lowest class. The section states the class and no dollar figure; the fine sits in the general sentencing statutes and is not stated here. There is no civil penalty, no eviction ground and no licensing sanction attached.
Can cities add their own rules

Yes, within the powers state law names in this row.

North Carolina leaves dogs to local government and says so in terms, while saying nothing at all about local pet-money rules. The dangerous-dog article preserves a city's or county's own dangerous-dog program, a city may regulate, restrict or prohibit the keeping of domestic animals including dogs and cats, a county may prohibit animal abuse, and counties hold a general police power. That is animal-control authority, and it does not carry authority over what a landlord may charge or write into a lease; no North Carolina statute either authorizes or forbids a local pet-charge or pet-policy ordinance. Two things sit beside the answer and are not it. The state bars a local ordinance regulating the amount of rent or barring a source-of-income refusal, so a local cap on monthly pet rent would have to be tested against that bar, and no authority has tested it. And the State Fair Housing Act devolves nothing: it never uses the word ordinance, its enforcement runs through the state Human Relations Commission and the superior court, and its only local-government provisions run the other way, making a local government's discriminatory land-use or permitting decision an unlawful housing practice. A separate disability provision binds local government by name, forbidding any body, including a political subdivision, to prevent a person with a disability from living in residential communities, homes and group homes on the same basis as anyone else; that is about excluding people rather than animals. No North Carolina city ordinance on pets in housing is stated here.

Localities may regulate the keeping or licensing of animals: The dangerous-dog article expressly preserves local programs: nothing in it is to be construed to prevent a city or county from adopting or enforcing its own program for the control of dangerous dogs. A county may by ordinance define and prohibit the abuse of animals, and holds a general power to define, regulate, prohibit or abate acts or conditions detrimental to the health, safety or welfare of its citizens. This is animal-control authority, not authority over what a landlord charges or puts in a lease. Text: N.C. Gen. Stat. § 67-4.5.

Localities may regulate the keeping or licensing of animals, a second instrument: A city may by ordinance regulate, restrict or prohibit the keeping, running or going at large of any domestic animals, including dogs and cats, and the ordinance may provide that animals allowed to run at large in violation of it may be seized and sold or destroyed after reasonable efforts to notify their owner. Text: N.C. Gen. Stat. § 160A-186.

Local rent control barred: No county or city may enact, maintain or enforce an ordinance or resolution that regulates the amount of rent to be charged for privately owned residential or commercial rental property, or that prohibits an owner from refusing to rent because the tenant's lawful source of income includes a federal housing assistance program. Four savings clauses preserve a locality's power over its own property, agreements with private persons about subsidized rents, restrictions on properties assisted with community development block grant funds, and ordinances applying to owners who take local funding or incentives. This is a rent preemption rather than a pet rule; whether it would reach a local cap on monthly pet rent has never been tested. Text: N.C. Gen. Stat. § 42-14.1 · (a), (b), (c).
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 State law adds nothing to, and refers to nothing in, the federal rules
Changes already signed into law No signed act is waiting to change these answers
Leading court decisions None carried — the answers rest on the statutes and rules cited

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

North Carolina 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: North Carolina 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 North Carolina, and is there a limit?
Yes — a pet deposit is allowed, with no ceiling of its own. North Carolina has no pet-deposit category at all.
Can a landlord charge pet rent or a non-refundable pet fee in North Carolina?
Yes — pet rent or a pet fee may be charged, and no statute caps it. North Carolina is one of the few states whose statute expressly allows a nonrefundable pet fee, and it sets no ceiling on it.
Does a North Carolina lease have to state a pet policy?
No — no statute requires a lease to state a pet policy, and no written-rules provision governs one. North Carolina requires nothing and supplies nothing.
Can a North Carolina landlord restrict pets by breed, size or weight?
Yes. No North Carolina statute limits, authorizes or preempts a breed, size or weight restriction in a tenancy, and there is no breed carve-out for an assistance animal.
Does North Carolina have its own assistance-animal law for rentals?
Yes — a disability-title housing right, with no documentation rule. The operative rules are statutory.
What documentation can a North Carolina landlord ask for when a tenant requests an assistance animal?
Nothing sets out what a landlord may ask. What the statute does say is how a person qualifies: on showing a state registration tag, or on a showing that the animal is being trained or has been trained as a service animal (section 168-4.2, subsection (a)).
Can a North Carolina landlord charge a pet deposit or pet rent for an emotional support animal?
Under state law, yes — the state bar reaches only a trained service, guide, hearing or assistance dog, or a certified animal; the federal rules still govern an emotional support animal; the bar is an express no-extra-charge clause, in a statute. Neither a person with a disability accompanied by a service animal, nor a person training one, may be required to pay any extra compensation for the animal (section 168-4.4).
What is the penalty for falsely claiming an assistance animal in North Carolina?
An offense or sanction that reaches a misrepresentation made to obtain housing: a misdemeanor, reaching the person claiming the animal and a landlord who denies or interferes with the right. It is unlawful to disguise an animal as a service animal or a service animal in training, and a violation is a Class 3 misdemeanor (section 168-4.5).

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the North Carolina General Statutes as the General Assembly's own host serves them. That host prints no current-through line on its statute pages, so currency was established three ways: the host's own modifications ledger, a table of 5,545 rows with columns for the citation, the type of change, the session law, the bill and section, the effective date, the status of the bill and whether the change is reflected in the statute, whose newest rows carry 2026 session laws with effective dates running to October 1, 2026; every cited section's own credit line, read in place; and a reading of every session law from 2023 through 2026 that touches a chapter relied on here. No ledger row touches sections 42-50 through 42-56 or sections 168-4.2 through 168-4.6, so the sections this page rests on are stable as served. Whole chapters read in full from the served text: chapter 42 (landlord and tenant), chapter 41A (the State Fair Housing Act), chapter 168 (persons with disabilities, every section), chapter 168A (the Persons with Disabilities Protection Act) and chapter 58 (insurance). Read section by section: 14-163.1, 17F-21, 20-175.2, 20-175.3, 130A-5, 153A-121, 153A-127, 160A-186, 67-4.1 and 67-4.5. Ten code-wide section searches were run over all chapters, each confirmed against a positive control in the same run because a search that finds nothing echoes an empty query. Seven session laws were read in full, from 2023 through 2026. The Office of Administrative Hearings' administrative code was read for the service-animal registration rules the statute directs the Department of Health and Human Services to adopt: title 10A chapters 01 (departmental rules), 17 (services for the deaf and hard of hearing), 63 (services for the blind) and 89 (vocational rehabilitation) were each read in full and none of them contains a service-animal, guide-dog or assistance-animal rule, so those rules could not be located and no value here rests on them. Bill-text searches were run over the 2023 and 2025 sessions with all editions included. The state appellate opinion archive was searched five times for decisions on the service-animal sections, on the pet-fee section and on the accommodation clause; the only decision citing the service-animal right, Stroud v. Harrison (1998), was read and set aside as a courtroom-access claim against a judge rather than a tenancy case, and no decision construes the pet-fee section at all.

What was read to state each absence on this page: