CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — Advocates of the disabled said a sign posted outside a south side Corpus Christi bar in February discriminated against people with service animals.
“I’m a little astounded because, in 2024, a quick Google search will tell you anything you need to know about what the access laws are,” Brittany Culp said.
Culp was talking about the Americans with Disability Act.
That law was broken when a bar off Rodd Field Road posted a sign on the front door that read ‘No animals, pets or service animals. Love them at home, not the bar.’
“You can’t just automatically refuse a service animal and their handler just because you don’t want them there,” Culp said.
Culp wears many hats. She’s a therapist, personal trainer, massage therapist and the owner of a service animal, Pixie, her seeing eye dog.
Culp has Retinitis Pigmentosa and has been blind since childhood.
As an adult, she received her first guide dog from ‘The Seeing Eye’ in Morristown, New Jersey.
“The ADA defines a service animal as an animal that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities,” Patrick Glines, the CEO of Guide Dogs of Texas, said during a Zoom interview with Kris 6 News.
KRIS 6 called the business after a viewer sent us a picture of the sign.
The employee who answered said the owner was not there and told the employee the sign out front of the establishment was illegal.
She said they aren’t a dog-friendly bar, and service animals are actually allowed, but the person has to have documentation to prove it.
“There is no official database,” Culp said in an interview.
“There’s no requirement or certification or an identification card or documentation card required,” Glines said. “They did this because they wanted to protect and be respectful of people with disabilities.”
“They can’t ask you ‘Well what is your disability?’ because that’s an invasion of privacy and that’s against ADA laws,” Culp said.
Under the law, business owners can ask two questions:
‘Is that a service animal?’ and ‘What service does the animal provide?’
“I don’t need to say I’m blind even though that’s fairly obvious,” Culp said. “I would just say she’s trained to guide me around obstacles. (She) tells me when there’s up curbs, down curbs. (She) finds entrances and exits.”
Businesses could be fined and or sued if they ban any kind of service animal from entering the establishment.
But in certain circumstances, they can ask them to leave.
“Even if it is a legitimate service animal and it’s acting up, you as a business do have the right to leave,” Culp said. “But you don’t have the right to deny access without any of those things.”
The owner of the bar never got back to KRIS 6, but a few days later, we saw that the sign had been removed.
Culp said it may have been a misunderstanding but says with the introduction of emotional support animals, she could understand the business owner's hesitations.
“I have friends who have small businesses, and they’ve had trouble with non-trained, quote, unquote, service animals or emotional support animals,” Culp said. “It’s just unfortunate because there’s a few who ruin it for everybody.”
ESAs don’t have the same protections under ADA law as service animals.
“It’s easy for any of us to go online and go to Amazon and buy a vest that says ‘service dog,’” Glines said. “And people are doing this and putting a service vest on their pet and misrepresenting that as a service dog.”
In 2023, the state of Texas made it illegal to misrepresent a pet as a service animal.
“People with disabilities just want to live a normal life like the rest of us,” Glines said.
“They want to be able to eat or go to shows or a movie without having to defend their disability or why they need or require a service dog.”
Culp said there is a great resource for both people with a disability or business owners who encounter a person with a service animal and aren’t clear on the law.
Seeing Eye Advocacy has an app that lets people choose between Federal, State, and U.S. territories and even Canadian laws to review and break down pages based on the type of ADA law.
“Our advice is to be polite, explain, keep the emotion down, if you can, because it can be triggering,” Glines said. “And the other thing that we advise is to do your best to move your way up the ladder to talk to a manager — if there’s a manager above that person.”
