This is an extra burden for having a disability which is specifically what the ADA tries to prevent. It allows anyone to train effectively any animal to perform any task that helps them with any disability they (or someone else) may have. It's ultimately these tasks and abilities that make an animal a service animal, not a registration or tag that needs to be kept up to date and costs money.
To be clear I'm talking about any registration that certifies an animal is a service animal, to my knowledge all service animals still have to have all other forms of legal registrations and tags.
It's really about the spirit of the ADA which tries to make sure that there are as few barriers as possible for people with disabilities in society. Someone else made a comment that describes how low the rates are for people with disabilities to have normal forms of ID for themselves, let alone their animals. For someone with a disability even the smallest of barriers can sometimes be insurmountable.
For example, California landolords must allow ESAs and can not require pet deposits for them
https://usserviceanimals.org/blog/emotional-support-animal-l...
ESA are an accepted therapeutic aid for mental issues. In fact airlines require medical evidence under 14 C.F.R. § 382.117(e).
I also mentioned in another comment below that my general interaction with ESAs is people using it as a loophole to take their pets places and causing issues for people with service animals. You're right that there are certainly good cases for it and I'm sure plenty of responsible people with ESAs that aren't part of that group.
Yes. As you say those are service animals, meaning they are trained to actively help e.g. a service animal could be trained to detect acute distress and actively insert themselves into the situation. An ESA is just support.
> I also mentioned in another comment below that my general interaction with ESAs is people using it as a loophole to take their pets places and causing issues for people with service animals.
I completely agree that this is a huge issue. Although people will also misrepresent service animals as most states have no sanctions about that (it's rarer because there are usually expectations about service animals, and the available "range" is extremely limited e.g. a cat or a cockatoo can not be a service animal).
I think a solution is for the government to place restrictions on emotional support animal use, eg the same way prescriptions are handled.
https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/culture/emot...
I'm a bit touchy on it because I've seen it become a real issue for people with service animals.
The key difference between an "emotional support animal" and a legitimate service animal is that service animals have training that directly assists with the person's disability. Easy examples are seeing-eye dogs, dogs that are trained to smell/detect low blood sugar in diabetics, and dogs that are trained to protect their owner if they have a seizure or similar.
Emotional support animals are just...emotional support and aren't trained to really do anything.
It seems like businesses were just too scared to go to battle over people bringing their pets places for fear of being accused of violating the ADA.
To be clear, I think emotional support animals are ridiculous, but the "no registration/license" piece is a very critical part of the ADA. Finally, businesses are allowed to ask what tasks a service animal has been trained to do as verification and that allowance doesn't even extend to service animals in training.