Mississippi Public Accommodation Right for Veterans With Support Animals

Miss. Code Ann. Section 43-6-155 gives an armed services veteran who is blind, mobility impaired, diagnosed with PTSD, or hearing impaired, and who uses a support animal specifically trained as a guide, leader, listener, or for other necessary assistance in day-to-day activities, the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of all public conveyances, hotels, lodging places, businesses open to the public for the sale of goods or services, and all places of public accommodation, amusement, or resort and other places to which the general public is invited. PTSD is named in the statute. That is the point of this entry. Federal disability law reaches service animals through a functional definition and has produced years of argument about psychiatric service animals; Mississippi wrote the diagnosis into the text. A veteran in Mississippi who is refused entry with a trained PTSD support animal can cite a state statute that says the words. The animal must be specifically trained. The statute is about a trained support animal performing assistance, not about an animal whose presence is comforting, and a business is entitled to the statute's terms rather than more than them. Two limits apply, and they are the whole of the limits. The support animal shall not occupy a seat in any public conveyance. And the animal must be on a leash or otherwise sufficiently restrained in a manner appropriate for the animal while using the facilities of a common carrier. Beyond those, the veteran is subject only to the conditions and limitations applicable to all persons not accompanied by an animal. No fee may be charged. The statute prohibits denying accommodations and prohibits charging for the animal, so a hotel pet fee or a cleaning surcharge does not apply. Trainers have the same rights. A support animal trainer working with an animal in training holds the same rights of accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges as the veteran does. That clause matters to the organizations that place these animals, and it is in the statute rather than in a policy. This is not in the federal Army benefits library's Mississippi page and is not in most state guides. A veteran who has been turned away should read the section itself and bring it.