PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Several weeks ago, Justina Higgins went into Legacy Randall Children’s Hospital to be with her 15-year-old daughter when she was told her service dog wasn’t allowed in.
“The security guard looks at me and looks at the dog and says ‘You can’t have your pet in here.’ I said ‘She’s not a pet, she’s a service dog,'” Higgins told KOIN 6 News.
Government documents show Higgins is “critically allergic to latex” and she’s considered disabled by the Social Security Administration.
“In 2004 I had an anaphylactic reaction at work to balloons,” Higgins said. “I was a nurse on the OB floor at St. Vincent’s and I ended up in the ICU for 4 days, and then it’s just gotten worse.”
Her allergy ended her nursing career and now she takes her service dog everywhere to alert her to latex.
At Randall, she explained her way past the security guard but ran into more resistance on her daughter’s floor.
“He said ‘We can’t have the dog on the unit, and if you want to see your child, you’ll comply with our rules.’ So I said ‘What are your rules? Because the policy you’re telling me doesn’t agree with the Americans with Disabilities Act,'” she said.
Over the course of 10 days at 2 different Legacy hospitals, Higgins said she was only allowed to meet her daughter in a conference room for a limited time, which seems to violate the hospital’s own policy and federal law.
The Legacy policy says service dogs are “never permitted in operating rooms, recovery rooms and procedure rooms” but it doesn’t say service dogs are forbidden from patient rooms.
The government’s website says “it would be inappropriate to exclude service animals from patient rooms.”
Legacy spokesperson Brian Terrett admitted the employees did not follow the hospital’s policy.
“This was a case of an individual coming to one of our facilities with a service animal and ran into a number of our employees who weren’t aware of the specifics of our policy and didn’t follow our policy,” Terrett said. “Essentially, our policy is very clear about service animals. If someone has a service animal, we ask if it’s a service animal, if they have the animal because of a disability, and if they say yes, we ask how does the animal provide service to you, and at that point those are the only questions we ask.”
The hospital is retraining its staff, but that’s not the only place service animals have caused confusion.
“There’s a lot of misunderstanding and feeling there’s a lot of cheaters out there,” Bob Joondeph with Disabilty Rights Oregon said.
Currently if someone lies that their comfort or therapy dog or a even a family pet, is a specially trained service dog, there isn’t much a store or hospital can do.
Joondeph said it would be too expensive to create and official licensing agency for service dogs and wonders who would enforce the rules.
Higgins said it’s frustrating that some people bend the rules by passing off non service animals as service animals.
“A service animal isn’t allowed to do anything you’re not allowed to do,” Joondeph said. “If you’re not allowed to pee on the floor, a service animal isn’t allowed to pee on the floor. If you’re not allowed to lick the fruit, a service animal is not allowed to lick the fruit. That service animal has to be under control.”
People who bend the rules make life difficult for people like Higgins.
“It’s not right to fake your service dog, but it’s not right to discriminate against a real service dog either.”