A California hospital can't unilaterally ban all service animals from certain areas, such as a psychiatric ward, a federal judge has ruled.
Siding with a disabled woman who said she had to choose between getting the treatment she needs for her bipolar disorder and getting the help she needs from her highly trained service dog, Inglis, U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte held last week that El Camino Hospital had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to do an individualized assessment of Inglis before banning the animal, reports Courthouse News.
The hospital had argued that concerns about infection, the safety of its other patients and disruption of ward routine justified the blanket ban.
But that is not what the law requires, Whyte said in a written opinion in the San Jose case: