I think a big problem though is where the animal is jumping around, going up to people, and it’s glaringly obvious the animal is not a trained service animal. But then you ask those two questions, “is it a service animal?” And “what service does it perform?” And the person goes yes it’s a service animal, and it performs [insert whatever function]..... you know they’re lying but you can’t do anything about it. As for the emotional support animals, people ARE conflating the two, saying (and often times truly believing) that ESA’s have the same rights as service animals. The average employee just assumes that to be true, and rather then risk a scene or a lawsuit they allow the ESA in. They may have 1 true service animal in a week, but now there’s 4 ESA’a on a daily basis.
It just seems like it would be easier for service animals to wear some kind of token or ID tag marking them as “official” (or whatever) and the penalties for forging one would be the same as forging a government form, like a fake drivers license. Make it simple for those truly needing a service animal to obtain, and free so there’s no undue hardship for them, but seems like it would eliminate this guessing game of whether or not it’s a “true” service animal
