Service & Emotional Support Animals

Understanding the Difference Between SAs and ESAs

Service Animals (SA) and Emotional Support Animals (ESA) have very different legal rights on college campuses. SAs are working animals permitted anywhere on campus, while ESAs are primarily recognized as housing accommodations and are restricted mostly to your dorm room.

Florida Southern College (FSC) Policy prohibits students from having animals in any College-owned housing. However, FSC will consider a request from a student with a documented disability to be accompanied in their living environment with an emotional support animal (ESA) as a reasonable accommodation from this prohibition, subject to appropriate documentation and following the interactive process to determine the appropriateness of an animal as the accommodation consistent with the nature of the documented disability.

The College defines an emotional support animal (ESA) as an animal (generally dog or cat) that provides emotional, cognitive, or similar support to ameliorates the effects of a documented disability. An ESA is not a pet.

This definition reflects the definition of emotional support animals under Florida State Law.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines service animals as “dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or tasks a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability. If a dog meets this definition, it is considered a service animal, regardless of whether a state or local government or a training program has licensed or certified it.