Moral Panic over Fake Service Animals

Abstract

We use Stanley Cohen’s moral panic framework to examine concerns about fake service animals and to illuminate processes of intersectionality that shape our social relations and systems. Applying Critical Animal Studies and Critical Disability Theory, we examine media reports about fake service animals in North America to explore how these anxieties constitute a moral panic, the interests at work, and underlying ideology that motivates outrage about animals considered to be out of place. We found that classifying other animals as legitimate or not affects those animals but also impacts humans. The findings indicate that speciesist representations and restrictions imposed on nonhuman animals maintain ongoing discrimination against humans with disabilities. The study reveals how speciesism sustains ableism and advances particular economic interests. Thus, we encourage expanding research ontology to examine speciesist power relations in intersectional analysis to dismantle ableist oppressive relationships and achieve trans-species social justice (social justice beyond humans).

1. Introduction

During 2009–2020, North American mass media reported on a “world taken over” by an “epidemic” of fake service animals invading public space. We argue that these reports constituted a moral panic that reveals deep anxieties not about growing numbers of service animals but about human relations with other animals more generally. Representations of nonhuman animals and their relations with humans reveal much about relationships among humans themselves, as this paper shows. Since Cohen (1972) introduced the concept of moral panic, it has been widely-used in analyzing human relationships. However, little attention has been directed towards how this concept can be used to examine trans-species relationships and the role of nonhuman animals in human societies (see Moloney and Unnithan 2019; Yates et al. 2001). Here, we extend the concept to human-nonhuman animal relationships by examining concerns about fake service animals (FSA) to illuminate intersectional processes that maintain power relationships and the social contexts surrounding them. We seek to add to an understanding of how problematization of certain animals reveals modernist constructions of appropriate spatial relationships between humans and nonhuman animals (Jerolmack 2008). We argue that examining this moral panic reveals anxieties not only about keeping nonhuman animals in their assigned physical space but also about policing the subservient status of these animals and established emotional relations. We take this further and argue that such policing efforts are used to maintain hierarchical relations among humans.

Critical literature on FSA is almost non-existent: Price (2017), using crip theory, which merges queer perspectives with Critical Disability Studies, shows how discursive construction of binaries normalizes certain treatment of humans with disabilities and animals who serve them and maintains unequal power relations; and Wlodarczyk (2019), analyzing news stories about service animals and emotional support animals, concludes that discourse that identifies “legitimate” service animals heightens politics of suspicion. Building on their contributions, we apply a Critical Animal Studies approach to examine human–animal relationships manifested in manufacturing FSA (1) to show how these anxieties constitute a moral panic, and (2) to enable the concept of moral panic as an analytical tool to illuminate what interests are at work, and the underlying ideology that motivates outrage about animals considered to be out of place.

2. Theoretical Framework

For this study, Cohen’s processual model of moral panic was used to assess mass media reports of what was claimed to be a growing and serious social problem, fake service animals; Critical Animal Studies (CAS) and Critical Disability Theory (CDT) were used to analyze how this was constructed as a social problem, examine the intersectional relationships involved, and to highlight interests at work that are typically overlooked.

Epistemologically and ontologically these theories take social constructionist views and scrutinize essentialist understanding of social relations. CAS and CDT, in particular, explore normative hierarchies (Jenkins et al. 2020; Lundblad 2020; MacPherson-Mayor and van Daalen-Smith 2020; Nocella et al. 2019; Taylor 2013, 2017). Both CAS and CDT are interdisciplinary; although they are not unified fields or theories, below we highlight some of their important key tenets applied in this study. Both CDT and CAS reject essentialist conceptualizations: CDT rejects essentialist understanding of disability, interrogating its liberal conceptions, and thus challenges privileging of normalcy and exclusion of others as ‘abnormal’ (Davis 2015; Devlin and Pothier 2006; Dorfman 2017; Meekosha and Shuttleworth 2009; Rioux and Bach 1994). CAS challenges human exceptionist conceptualization of animals as capitalism, colonial and imperial justification for exploiting non-human animals as resources (Matsuoka and Sorenson 2018; Nibert 2002; Nocella et al. 2014; Sorenson and Matsuoka 2019). Although not all CDT proponents link oppression of people with disabilities (PWD) to oppression of nonhuman animals, some do (Jenkins et al. 2020; Oliver 2016; Taylor 2013). CDT interrogates injustice based on ableism (e.g., Erevelles 2011; Pothier and Devlin 2006), while CAS unsettles speciesist and anthropocentric normativity and examines intersectional oppression of all species, promoting social justice (Matsuoka et al. 2020; Matsuoka and Sorenson 2021, 2022; Nocella et al. 2014). Thus, examining the use of service dogs requires both CAS and CDT for intersectional analysis (MacPherson-Mayor and van Daalen-Smith 2020). CAS and CDT examine language and power within social, political, and economic contexts. They are essential as disability is a relational concept (Pothier and Devlin 2006; Rioux and Bach 1994; Titchkosky and Michalko 2009; Withers 2012) so is speciesism (Matsuoka and Sorenson 2018; Nibert 2002; Nocella et al. 2014; Sorenson and Matsuoka 2019; Twine 2012). CDT and CAS also investigate images, identifications, and emotions generated in these contexts (Taylor 2013; Twine 2012).

We situate ourselves within CAS which is informed by political economy analyses, emphasizes material relations and focuses on institutionalized exploitation of animals. Such CAS analyses utilize the following key concepts. Speciesism means a form of discrimination in which individuals receive differential treatment based on species membership (Ryder 1989; Singer 1990) and an ideology that legitimizes animal exploitation (Nibert 2002). Anthropocentrism refers to material and discursive construction of an ontological and ethical division between human and nonhuman lives, and a conviction that humans are exceptional due to certain qualities. Anthropocentrism places humans above other beings, allowing the network of interests and relations with corporate and government institutions that exploit nonhuman animals (Noske 1989). To reveal hidden interests and relations, and normative expectations, the concept of truncated narrative, the fragmented view that ignores the broader context and root causes of ethical problems, is useful (Kheel 1993). Thus, in addition to disability and intersectionality as analytical concepts, we utilized speciesism, anthropocentrism, and truncated narrative.

Moral panics are situations in which certain activities are defined as threats to society’s values and interests, with media presenting this in stylized ways, exaggerating danger, identifying threats to normative values, inciting aggrieved moral responses and increasing hostility toward a target group as media and public figures demand punitive measures (Cohen 1972, p. 1). This social constructionist approach requires examination of the interests that determine which actions will be defined as deviant and threatening and identifies marginalization and vilification of particular groups as key aspects of moral panics. The focus is not on individual behaviour but on how certain behaviour becomes defined as deviant, as a means of maintaining social control; thus, a moral panic approach helps reveal intersectional relations of power. These aspects of the moral panic approach are useful, as this paper demonstrates, to reveal the complex interactions of processes that shape social structural oppression; doing so is one of the challenges in studies of intersectionality (Choo and Ferree 2010).

Critcher (2008) compared Cohen’s processual model with Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s (1994) attributional one. Cohen identified key agents (media, moral entrepreneurs, control culture, the public) arguing that media produce moral panics as part of normal news-making practice, due to the institutional focus on disruption. The process involves (1) labelling some group as a threat, (2) emotional rhetoric to convince the public that action is needed to defend society, (3) development of control measures and (4) subsidence or creation of legal, political or social change. Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) focused on who makes claims, why, and how, and identified five characteristic features. First, concern is expressed through increased media reporting or lobbying by interest groups. Second, hostility is generated, and deviant trouble-makers are identified. Third, consensus is reached that a threat exists. Fourth, expressed concerns are exaggerated and disproportionate to any actual harm or threat that does exist. Fifth, moral panics are volatile; they appear suddenly and may dissipate quickly. Although Cohen emphasizes media instigation and state complicity and Goode and Ben-Yehuda see media as conduits for others’ views, we agree with Critcher’s assessment that the models are complementary. Both see that moral panics involve labelling some group as a threat, use of emotional rhetoric to convince the public that action is needed to defend society, development of control measures, and subsidence or creation of legal, political or social change. We also emphasize two other crucial features: the moral dimension of the reaction and the idea that the actions are symptomatic of a broader problem (Garland 2008, p. 12). Emphasis on the moral dimensions of moral panic alerts us to the alleged dangers to fundamental social values, in this case relations with nonhuman animals. In Western culture, these relations are hierarchical and, especially in North America, spatially delimited. As this study shows, the symptomatic character of this moral panic over FSAs in North America reveals anxieties about the breakdown of a rigid social order based on species boundaries. Moral panics serve to reassert established values and reinforce the outsider status of targeted groups (Pepin-Neff and Cohen 2021), in this case nonhuman animals.

Moral panics are ‘enacted melodramas’ that use emotional and exaggerated language to demarcate boundaries between good and evil and mobilize crackdowns on those who threaten proper morality (Wright 2015). Noting parallels between moral panics and the culture of fear (Altheide 2002), Critcher (2011, p. 270) describes them as ‘distorted and disproportionate response[s] to social problems which are as a consequence systematically misrecognized.’ Such responses are encouraged by the commercial context of mass media, with its problem frame designed to produce excitement and entertainment through striking images, identification with victims, ‘simplistic assumptions, familiar formats and easy solutions’ (264). In this paper, by utilizing these moral panic models, CAS, and CDT, we examine how media reports construct a moral panic about FSA, and argue that this panic is concerned not just with individual behaviours but that it is shaped by deeper speciesist anxieties about the changing status of nonhuman animals. Traversing what Lundblad (2020, p. 766) calls disanimality—the disruptive/productive meeting of CDT and CAS—we intend to illuminate the complex processes of intersectionality and social contexts that enable such oppressive social practices.

3. Methods

Utilizing CAS, moral panic models, and CDT, we conceptualized FSA as a socially constructed idea and addressed the following research questions: how do anxieties about FSA constitute a moral panic, what interests are at work, and what underlying ideology motivates outrage about animals considered to be out of place?

As mass media contribute to shaping public opinion and play a central role in the construction of moral panics (Cohen 1972; Critcher 2003), to address our research questions, we conducted searches for ‘fake service animals’ in mass media by using different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and media databases such Access World News, Factiva, and Nexis Uni. Two researchers conducted independent searches on two occasions separated by at least three months, using four different computers: in March 2020, and repeated in September 2020. Although the number of hits is over a thousand on search browsers, only about the first 250 were relevant. We eliminated irrelevant (those that did not reference illegitimate service animals and emotional support animals) and repetitive entries. Media reports produce geographies and social worlds that conform to established ‘systems of meaning or patterned modes of thinking’ (Bain et al. 2020, p. 884). Thus, we focused on North American reports, where political, economic, and social contexts are familiar to the researchers. This resulted in 218 entries in March and 215 in September. All appeared since 2009; most after 2017 with numbers dwindling in 2020. We chose the most recent search results as more were still accessible. Half were mainstream media (newspapers, magazines, television, radio) reports (107); others were websites and blogs (108) including general interest sites and those focused on pets and service animals. Following moral panic models (Bain et al. 2020; Jeffery 2018), we centred our analysis on mainstream media because we are interested in media as news-making agents and other websites typically reproduced, summarized and commented on information from mainstream media. We removed similar stories by the same author in different media and links which were no longer accessible. This resulted in 72 entries that provided enough detail for further analysis, including twelve entries from Canadian media. We checked the results with the above-listed media databases and found no new items.

We aimed to explore how media reports framed these issues to shape public perception and reinforce existing norms, values, and hierarchies, particularly in terms of trans-species relations. For this, we went through several iterative analyses. First, both authors conducted what Charmaz (2014, p. 343) calls initial coding, ‘the early process of engaging with and defining data’. This first stage of coding involved reading the entries, coding and categorizing words, lines or segments. We applied various types of coding methods such as attribute coding (e.g., “publication year”), subcoding (e.g., “solution-education”), descriptive coding (e.g., victims) and In Vivo coding (e.g., “epidemic”) (Saldaña 2013). Codes were then categorized; for example, under victims, we had people with disabilities and service dogs, etc. Then, because we used Cohen’s processual model of moral panic, we categorized the codes by publication years of entries from which we obtained them. This helped assess if changes over time showed the emergence of moral panic. Second, we compared the independently conducted results. Both found similar themes and processes of moral panic development. Third, we merged independently identified codes and came to mutually agreed-on codes and repeated the process. Nvivo was useful for these iterative analysis processes. We agreed that the emergence of moral panic over fake service animals corresponded well with Cohen’s model. Fourth, we then closely analyzed the emergence by using key aspects of moral panics: examination of what interests determined certain actions as deviant and threatening, and of marginalization and vilification of particular groups as a way to maintain social control. We paid particular attention to social constructions of disabilities, anthropocentrism, and speciesism through material relations and human–animal relationships. Here, we presented the results of analyses and organized the findings and discussion section first using Cohen’s processual model but with these headings: Villains and Victims; Epidemic—Emotional Rhetoric; Voicing Control over Fake Service Animals; Calls to action. After demonstrating FSA constitutes a moral panic, we examined how service dogs are portrayed in these reports, by using CAS to provide further discussions on interests at work and ideology behind. We conclude the paper with theoretical and practical implications of this study.

4. Findings and Discussion

4.1. Villains and Victims

A villain is a key element of moral panic (Cohen 2011; Critcher 2008; Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994). Several villains emerged in ‘fake service animals’ discourse: ‘[P]eople disguising their dogs as service dogs to travel, shop, and even go to night clubs. People think what they’re doing is harmless but it’s not. It’s very harmful …’ (Grzanich 2013). Earlier reports identified villains as people who portrayed themselves as disabled users of service animals in order to have public access with pets. For example, ‘Around the country, an increasing number of ethically challenged human beings are faking disabilities in order to snag good parking spots, cut lines at theme parks, or just bring their dogs into restaurants’ (Tuttle 2013).

Over time, reports no longer emphasized that people were faking disabilities. Instead, fraudulent representation of pets as service animals, dressed with pseudo-official jackets and identification came to dominate as the emergence of ‘FSA.’ Gradually, focus shifted onto nonhuman animals, mostly dogs, but occasionally pigs, cats, or other animals were named as villains. Villainous fake service dogs were described as ‘vest-clad dogs barking, biting, peeing, jumping, and generally doing things that even a mildly trained dog wouldn’t do’ (Wunderman 2017). In other words, these villainous dogs did not meet training standards even for pets and symbolized animals “out of control”. That negative representations shifted from the actions of unscrupulous humans to nonhuman animals themselves is unsurprising because of institutionalized anthropocentrism and speciesism that help to shape imagined spatial order: nonhuman animals are expected to remain in their assigned spaces, with “livestock” in farms and slaughterhouses and “pets” in the home. Not only did the mere presence of FSA in public constitute a violation of order, ostensibly posing a threat to sympathetic victims, i.e., PWD, but rhetoric about a world taken over by fake service animals reveals anxiety about multiple transgressions: not only dogs in public spaces but the movement of other animals such as pigs from their assigned categories. The Chicago Tribune (Davis 2017) sums it up: ‘Fake service dogs are essentially untrained pets wearing vests or tags purchased online so Fido can tag along, too. They’ve become the bane of those who rely on trained service dogs to deal with disabilities.’ Additional villains were sellers of fake vests and certification: ‘Anyone who sells you a certification is a scammer’ (Roustan 2011) but such strong condemnation decreased over time. Thus, villains fell into three categories: humans, nonhuman animals and businesses.

Media portrayed persons with disabilities and who use service animals as victims. People with disabilities (PWD) are characterized as victims because their safety is threatened. The Boston Globe (2019) editorialized: ‘If not highly trained, these [fake service] dogs can get stressed and interfere with the life-saving work that legitimate service dogs perform for their human.’ PWD were quoted: ‘We were concerned about our safety…’ (Burke 2018).

Cohen (2011) suggests victims are those with whom one can easily identify. PWD are readily categorized as victims, especially if disabilities are physical, visible and meet conventional individualistic views of disability. Media reports encouraged feelings of virtuous outrage against unscrupulous villains who took advantage of PWD. However, other victims also emerge. Not-so-obvious victims are service dogs who are rigorously trained, often over years, to focus on their tasks; some required retraining to overcome traumatic attacks by untrained fake service dogs (FSD).

Other victims are businesses. Reports cited confusion about service animals and concerns from airlines and restaurants that sustained damage caused by FSA. Thus, victims also fell into three categories: humans, nonhuman animals and businesses. Below, we note how images and representations of villains and victims reveal social, economic, and political tensions about human–animal relations and relationships among humans.

4.2. Epidemic—Emotional Rhetoric as a Tool for Maintaining Intersectional Oppression

Distortion, exaggeration and escalation are essential parts of moral panics (Cohen 2011; Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994). Much of the exaggerated rhetoric and manufactured outrage was generated by a widely-cited New Yorker article in which Marx (2014) describes her stunt of taking various animals (alpaca, pig, snake, turkey, turtle) into public spaces, using certification obtained online to claim them as emotional support animals. Appearing in a prestigious publication and comprising a series of increasingly over-the-top scenes, the intention of Marx’s article was entertainment at the cost of PWD and it was a key text in spreading this moral panic. Other journalists copied her stunt, acquiring false certificates for different animals ‘to see how easy it is to have a pet fly for free as an emotional support animal’ (Llamas et al. 2015). Marx’s intent was to demonstrate that ‘it’s gone too far’ but her article is based on mocking the very idea of emotional support animals (ESA). She asserts that fakery is widespread, citing the case of Truffles, a ‘large service dog’ who defecated on a flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, creating ‘emotional trauma’ for human passengers, devastating their ‘mental well-being.’ While the incident may have been unpleasant for nearby passengers, it is unlikely to have been traumatic. In fact, it was likely Truffles who endured the trauma. Marx uses hyperbole to indicate a situation out of control due to fraudulent claims about ESA but she provides no evidence of misrepresentation, merely a story of a frightened animal. The effect is to create suspicion of those who use service animals. Discourse about FSD reveals speciesist anxieties about where animals belong. Not only is it taken for granted that certain physical spaces are reserved for humans alone, but emotional space is also demarcated [See Price (2017) who made a similar observation based on her own experiences with an emotional support dog]. Marx’s article fits the emotional framework of neoliberalism, where empathy for others is mocked. The idea that people can form close attachments to animals and derive emotional support from them is considered weakness. Marx (2014) ridicules compassionate cross-species relationships, stating ‘as far as animals go, I like them—medium rare.’ In this speciesist narrative, nonhuman animals must be kept in their place and firm boundaries maintained.

Moral panic about FSD is a subset of a larger trans-species urban politics and broader discourse about animals in society generally, where their presence is seen as a decivilizing threat to hegemonic meanings of spaces claimed as exclusive zones of human-dominated cultural order (Holmberg 2013; Philo and Wilbert 2000; Wolch 1998). Historically, Western religion and philosophy have emphasized a fundamental division between humans and nonhuman animals, rejecting the latter’s subjectivity and characterizing them as inferior and mechanical forms of life, existing purely as resources for the former, who claim dominion over them. One consequence of such attitudes is the effort to maintain rigid spatial boundaries that separate humans from other animals. Consequences are especially dangerous for “wild” animals who venture into spaces claimed by humans (e.g., Mikuse 2019). Increasingly crowded urban spaces mean less space for animals, greater intolerance for their public presence and more anxiety about dirt, risk and safety. These spatial boundaries may be especially pronounced in the United States, where public space is highly controlled and dog-hostile. Anxieties arise from conflicting ideas about where animals belong and where they should be allowed in public spaces (Armbruster 2019). Any effort to allow nonhuman animals access to these spaces becomes part of a struggle to define cultural order. Dogs, in particular, are conceptually troublesome because they are liminal beings, neither fully cultural nor fully natural, who threaten to breach these boundaries (Fox 2006; Serpell 2017; Sorenson and Matsuoka 2019). Nonhuman animals are considered property and killable; however, as companion animals, dogs ‘exist in the liminal space between object and individual being’ (Sanders 1995, p. 196) and this liminality is further complicated in the case of service animals that are considered equipment. Transgression of species boundaries is tolerated where animals play a functional role as reliable and subservient service providers for those with obvious physical disabilities. However, where disabilities are less visible or where the presence of animals is perceived as deviation from acceptable hierarchal relations the response is hostility, mockery and reassertion of threatened values. The over-reaction is intended to deliver a message to the offenders and to the public about keeping nonhuman animals in their place, both spatially and in terms of intersubjective relationships. Strong emotional connections with animals are themselves widely-dismissed as misguided sentimentalism, a further transgression of proper relations of hierarchy and subservience, while the concept of ESA is identified as a ‘scam’ (Leonhardt 2018). Derision of ESA and their owners is intense, accompanied by contempt for perceived psychological weakness and dependency of owners. For example, claiming that numbers of fake service dogs are ‘exploding’, Matei (2019) says that what looks like ‘rampant entitlement’ represents efforts by ‘the anxious generation’ to self-medicate, creating a system ‘rife with confusion, selfishness and profiteers’ while Barth (2019) argues that use of ESA reflects ‘growing acceptance of narcissism and selfishness in our culture’ and Halberstam (2020, p. 717) sees ESA as accessories to ‘the all-too-human drama of cultivated fragility.’ These expressions of contempt for ESA are linked to wider discourses warning of ‘runaway political correctness’ and self-indulgence (Wlodarczyk 2019, p. 85). They also reflect assignations of moral worth based on notions about individualism and independence that are both ableist and serviceable for capitalism (Meekosha and Dowse 2007; Oliver 2016, p. 251). While using trained, subservient animals to assist with physical disabilities is accepted, the idea that humans might rely on other animals for emotional support seems fraudulent by definition and inspires rage because this contradicts speciesist assumptions about hierarchy.

Overblown rhetoric about FSD emerged in reports using the rhetoric of ‘epidemic’ expressed by experts or politicians. Citing the founder of International Assistance Dog Awareness Week, Chicago CBS News reported ‘a despicable epidemic … happening all across the country,’ (Grzanich 2013). Wisconsin public radio reported the American Kennel Club’s description of an ‘epidemic of fake service dogs’ (Schossow 2017). In South Carolina, Palmetto Animal Assisted Life Services, which provides trained service dogs to PWD, applauded legal efforts to stop the ‘epidemic of fake service dogs’ (Gaither and Scarlett 2019). In Arizona, Senator John Kavanagh introduced a bill to address the ‘epidemic’ (Nicla 2018).

Similarly, in Canada, Kyle Rawn of Accessibility Professionals of Ontario told CBC News that FSDs were ‘an epidemic across the province’ (Burke 2018), while the National Post described not simply a ‘North American epidemic’ but an entire ‘world taken over’ by FSA (Hopper 2018). Yet, where actual figures were cited, the picture seems very different and exaggeration and distortion are clear. While reporting ‘too many fake service dogs’, Woodward (2019) states that the British Columbia government receives only two complaints per year (but does not say how many are upheld); such low numbers indicate that fear of an ‘epidemic’ is overblown. In reports we examined, no actual evidence was provided to show that FSD had reached ‘epidemic’ proportions or that they have in fact ‘taken over’ the world. This is confirmed: ‘there are no available numbers documenting the problem’ and perceived danger is based entirely on anecdotes circulating among service dog trainers and owners, the alleged ‘experts’ who identify the problem (McQuigge 2015). Five years later, in the United States, ‘The extent of the phony service animal epidemic is unclear, mainly because it’s difficult to tell whether the person on the other end of the leash is faking a disability’ (Wilson 2020).

Panic rhetoric is stylized to emphasize moral and symptomatic danger and escalates hatred and reactions that distance and scapegoat certain individuals and groups (Cohen 2011; Garland 2008). Such rhetoric is useful to get people’s attention and as a result, the phenomena become noticeable (Cohen 2011). Cohen called this ‘sensitization’ (2011, p. 80). Panic rhetoric of ‘epidemic’ is laden with obvious associations with disease and contamination, evoking fear. Sensitization increased public awareness of FSA, inspiring perceptions of imminent threats. Exaggeration rooted in speciesist norms facilitates the emergence of dramatic images of villains and victims. As the number of media reports on FSA increased, images of villains and victims became fixed through manipulation of unquestioned speciesist and ableist norms. As noted, three types of villains can be identified; yet increasingly, emphasis was placed on animals dressed in “service outfits” entering public spaces, instead of the fact that people falsely present themselves as disabled or that online businesses profit from sales of fraudulent jackets and certificates. This is significant for understanding our questions: how anxieties about the conceptualization of human-nonhuman animal relations constitute a moral panic, how their proper places are imagined, what interests are at work, and what underlying ideologies are in operation. We examine these further in the following sections.

4.3. Voicing Control over Fake Service Animals: Perpetuating Intersectional Oppression

Panic rhetoric of ‘epidemic’ also indicates lack of control, disorder and a spreading contagion that threatens life, alerting awareness as it refers to rampant diseases. Such stylized rhetoric which escalates moral panic is a common element in social control culture (Cohen 2011). Generally, ideas of disease and contamination are part of a discursive apparatus used to maintain a sense of distance and borders between humans and other animals. Panic discourse signals a breakdown of borders and order (Cohen 2011), in this case, concerning who has access to public spaces, such as restaurants and air carriers. Voices for control become louder, warning of breaches of the boundary that must be maintained between humans and other species, as ‘Organizations representing restaurants and grocers said they want a solution to stop owners from bringing all sorts of pets into their establishments’ (Nicla 2018).

Others highlight that airlines faced problems from illegitimate service animals: noise, contamination by defecation and urination, and biting. These are identified as good reasons for prohibiting animals from such spaces.

… flight attendants … are dealing with a growing number of problems as more people board flights with emotional support animals…‘When they are not properly trained to be service animals or emotional support animals this can cause safety problems, … Those animals have gotten loose, they have been racing all over the cabin.’.

(Lyons and Emery 2019)

This report continued its characterization of chaos by citing an incident from five years before (the case of Truffles, described by Marx in the New Yorker).

Media reports repeatedly cited the same few incidents as a means to emphasize disorder, using terms such as ‘flying zoos’ and ‘Noah’s Ark’ (Boston Herald 2020; Steinhauer 2019) as if to suggest that animal-created pandemonium on planes was now the standard situation. However, reports did not address the experience of those who require ESA to travel. Furthermore, the incident noted above indicates that flying can be equally upsetting for ESA themselves and despite airlines’ claims of increasing use of ESA or FSA, airlines did not prepare for accidents or try to meet changing patterns of human–animal relations by providing adequate and appropriate space. Indeed, only one report noted that space in cabins was shrinking and none questioned the lack of alternative transportation for people uneasy about flying who need support. Reports seemed to assume that most, if not all, people using ESA were faking.

Other key public spaces are restaurants. Reports identified noise issues or emphasized customers who claimed pets as ‘service animals’ and allowed them to sit on chairs or on their laps. Such descriptions were followed by comments from experts (trainers or people who use trained service animals) that the proper place for animals is under the table where they will not be noticed. As one trainer said,

… service dogs are trained to be as unobtrusive as possible. No one should even know they’re there… Service dogs should be quietly lying under the table, not interacting with service staff or any other animals. A dog barking, sitting in chair, not behaving appropriately is not a service dog.

(Lunsford 2017)

These reports emphasized that legitimate service animals in public spaces such as restaurants and stores should be invisible. One Army veteran, diagnosed with PTSD, who trains and uses service dogs clarified expectations: ‘A legitimate service dog is to be unobtrusive, out of the way, barely noticeable. So, I can live a normal lifestyle and not feel that people are staring at me’ (Nelson 2020). Such animals are allowed because they are invisible and do not openly invade public spaces, thus maintaining normalcy without disruption. Moral panic surrounding FSA is not only due to concerns about misrepresentation but reflects deeper speciesist anxieties about changes in the status of nonhuman animals, here embodied by their access to public spaces considered to be only for humans. Normalcy truncates another dominant narrative, which must be revealed for further understanding on constructing FSA as a moral panic.

Reports always included views of experts such as trainers, representatives from service dog organizations or owners of such animals. Some gave historical context, noting how PWD struggled for rights to public access (Morris 2018). Another described the intent of the Americans with Disabilities Act 1990 (ADA):

… to make it as easy as possible for a disabled person to access the community … Part of that was saying that store owners and restaurants and any place in public they’re not allowed to ask you even for proof.

(Stewart 2016)

Legally, individuals are not required to show evidence of disability. ‘In fact …the legislation [suggests requests to provide such evidence] constitute an offence’ (Coren 2015). Individuals’ rights, regardless of (dis)abilities are protected by legislation such as the 1990 ADA and 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights. The ADA allows people to ask questions about service animals but not about the individual’s disabilities. The amended 2010 ADA states: ‘Staff [in public spaces] may ask two questions: (1) is the dog a service animal required because of a disability, and (2) what work or task has the dog been trained to perform?’ However, disability rights are still not understood fully in the 21st century (Dorfman 2019; Johnson 2002) and those with disabilities are still considered oddities, especially when they are accompanied by a dog, or look/behave differently, and thus are “stared at” or surveilled. Essentialist and liberal views prevail and disability is still largely considered an issue of individuals and their deficits and is subject to stigma and discrimination (Erevelles 2011; Dorfman 2019), rather than being viewed as the result of particular environments and socio-economic and political contexts which enable or prevent individuals to live fully and maintain unequal power relationships. From the latter view, access to public spaces by those with disabilities should be their right, and normal, with or without animals. However, individualistic and essentialist views characterize access to public spaces for PWD and service animals as a privilege. The truncated narrative of normalcy is that public spaces are for people without dependency on other animals. Such truncated, discriminatory views of disabilities by restaurants and other businesses went unquestioned; reports allowed businesses to complain that it is difficult to identify legitimate service dogs without asking questions about individuals’ disabilities and that the laws are confusing.

Outrage and moral panic were mobilized against those who engaged in misrepresentation to gain privilege and undeserved benefits, such as access to public space (Dorfman 2019; Johnson 2002). Even easier was mobilization of outrage and moral panic against nonhuman animals. As discussed above, villains were no longer people faking disabilities but animals with fraudulent jackets. Media reports decentered the issue of disabilities and focused on animals. This shift of focus was hardly noticed as it fits normative expectations, i.e., the truncated narrative of normalcy. The focus became maintaining speciesist order (controlling animals) so that public spaces remained for “normal” humans alone. Thus, discursive tactics to create ranking of what is legitimate or normal worked to exclude “others” (including nonhuman animals and humans with disabilities) from public access, as Price (2017) and Wlodarczyk (2019) argued. Here, incorporating anti-speciesist analysis in moral panic illuminated processes of intersectional oppression and maintenance of social contexts that allow such exclusionary social practices to continue.

4.4. Calls to Action: Preserving Intersectional Injustice

Cohen (2011) identifies the next stage of a moral panic as the effort to find solutions, typically involving socially accredited experts. In the moral panic over FSA, efforts involved calls for “cracking down” through legal changes. By 2018, organizations representing businesses such as restaurants and grocers, demanded solutions to stop FSA entering their premises. These demands reflect Critcher’s (2008, p. 1130) contention that ‘Panics happen in part because they fulfil a function of reaffirming society’s moral values.’ Here, the values being reaffirmed are about speciesist boundaries: in order to restore society’s moral values, action must be taken. As we discuss here, calls to action also reveal other motives for creating moral panic, such as the furtherance of direct material interests.

Strong support for toughening laws came from trainers or training organizations—the experts in the field. A frequently cited expert was Canine Companions for Independence (CCI), ‘the nation’s largest breeding and training program for service dogs… [which] launched an online petition asking the US Department of Justice to crack down on service dog fraud and end online sales of fake service dog certification products’ (Grzanich 2013). The President of the National Association of Guide Dog Users, Marion Gwizdala (2016), recounts CCI’s long history of lobbying: CCI’s Executive Director, Corey Hudson, began his campaign to ‘crack down’ on FSDs in 1991 by lobbying the Department of Justice. In late 2010s when CCI officials, trainers and volunteers were quoted, regardless of location, they consistently described the situation as alarming, requiring immediate actions to tighten laws. These efforts were successful as ‘[L]aws criminalizing the misrepresentation of a pet as a service animal’ (Siler 2017) were implemented in almost half the states in the USA by 2019 (Hanson 2019).

CCI representatives and other training organizations demanded legal action to protect persons with disabilities and legitimate service dogs. They emphasized legitimacy of their programs, their dogs and their acceptance, instead of strengthening disability rights. For example:

[the training organization is] glad lawmakers are beginning to address what it calls a growing epidemic of fake service dogs… Misrepresentation of service animals delegitimizes the program and makes it harder for persons with disabilities to gain unquestioned acceptance of their legitimate, properly trained, and essential service animals.

(Gaither and Scarlett 2019)

Thus, calls for “cracking down” were less about better understanding of disability than about strengthening the legitimacy of costly training programs and the commodified products that they market, i.e., dogs. Emphasis was placed on provision of proper tools, i.e., subservient animals. We discuss this further in Section 4.5.

Noticeably, reports often quoted veterans who use service dogs due to PTSD (see Wlodarczyk 2019, pp. 86–87), and most were consistent with other trainers and training organizations by expressing support for “cracking down”. They emphasized that legal changes would prevent mistreatment from businesses that mistakenly considered them as fakers.

These calls for “cracking down” did not go unchallenged; advocacy groups and organizations for PWD considered ‘cracking down’ problematic. One service dog users’ association stated: ‘While we deplore those who might be so unethical as to impersonate a disabled person by dressing their dog up as a service animal, we equally deplore the frenzy of alarm being stirred up about the risk of such abuse’ (Chatanoogah Times 2013). An attorney for Arizona Center for Disability Law (ACDL), a non-profit public interest law firm to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities, considers the problem minor, asserting: ‘[those] who are putting these (laws) forward are making a big deal like there’s thousands of people out there with these fraudulent service animals’ (Ficher 2018). Moreover, the President of the National Association of Guide Dog Users, Marion Gwizdala (2016) characterizes reports of an epidemic of FSDs as ‘fearmongering’.

Gwizdala compares such propaganda to ‘evil marketing’ in which businesses exaggerate minor issues as problems to be solved by purchasing their products and services, in this case, training and certification programs. He revealed close connections between CCI and Assistance Dogs International (ADI), ‘the only accrediting body of service-animal programs in the world’; for example, Corey Hudson, CCI’s Executive Director, was past president of ADI and Paul Mundell, a CCI board member, was president of ADI at that time (Gwizdala 2016). CCI promotes certification by ADI. If service dogs are certified by an organization, it means by default that registries are created. Such registries are more than surveillance of service dogs. In fact, calls for certification and registry created fear among users as ‘a registry could be used to identify people with disabilities and deny, for example, healthcare, housing, credit or employment’ (Morris 2018). As we argued elsewhere, efforts to control other animals are intertwined in complex, multifaceted ways with efforts to control humans (Matsuoka et al. 2020; Matsuoka and Sorenson 2021, 2022; Sorenson and Matsuoka 2019). Here, controlling service dogs means controlling PWD.

As an accreditation body, ADI sets standards for training programs as well as ethical standards. ADI requires service dogs to wear identifiable gear. If dogs are not trained by accredited programs, users still must comply by having dogs wear such gear in order to be certified by the ADI. Gwizdala points out such standards contradict the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prevents regulations to identify service dogs for public space access because such access is the right of individuals regardless of disabilities. He urges ADI ‘should not be imposed upon a consumer and purported as ethical’ (Gwizdala 2016). If states or local regulations require such certification and dressing dogs in certified gear, Gwizdala explains, training organizations such as CCI will gain financially from sales and services, while such requirements threaten disability rights.

To protect disability rights, the National Association of Guide Dog Users and the National Federation of the Blind laboured to have such legislation withdrawn or amended. The Arizona Center for Disability Law (ACDL) highlighted problems for PWD from proposed legal changes which criminalized misrepresenting pets as service animals and required written proof of formal training. Those who trained their own service animals could not produce such proof and would be criminalized: ‘The police are going to get called if a business owner doesn’t believe them…It’s just a disaster. It really punishes the people with disabilities for the actions of a very few.’ The ACDL asserted that the two questions allowed by current Federal law sufficiently discriminate ‘who is entitled to bring an animal in’ (Ficher 2018). Similarly, the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) rejected a crackdown, asserting that ‘laws should aim to educate, rather than punish…’ A senior NDRN staff attorney argued, ‘We want to have a positive impact on people to help them realize that what they’ve done has this very negative effect’ (Ollove 2017).

In 2015 British Columbia’s provincial government introduced clauses about false representation, certification and registries in its Guide Dog and Service Dog Act, making it the only Canadian province requiring mandatory certification of service dogs by organizations that meet ADI standards; dogs not trained by these organizations must become certified by one of them. In 2019, media reported PWD in B.C. are still being harassed or denied access to taxis and public spaces, such as stores (Dickson 2019; Grossman 2019). This indicates that the crackdown does not discriminate “fake” from “legitimate” animals, but that legal changes fail to ensure citizenship and inclusion of PWD. Here, we witnessed intersectional oppression in action: by endorsing unquestioned boundaries between humans and other animals, calls to action by businesses, the public and politicians prevented legitimate everyday participation of PWD. Devlin and Pothier’s (2006, p. 2) influential critique of the liberal understanding of disabilities is relevant here: ‘disability is not … an issue of sensitivity and compassion; rather, it is a question of politics and power(lessness), power over, and power to.’ As we demonstrated here, liberal perspectives in businesses, the public, and political and legal systems ‘conceptualize disability as misfortune, and privilege normalcy over the abnormal’ (Devlin and Pothier 2006, p. 2).

In summary, disability rights organizations and PWD disagree with media reports on the ‘epidemic’ and with calls for immediate legal action in the name of protecting them. Canadian experiences suggest that promoting legal changes to punish fakers and to mandate certification and registries are not effective to protect disability rights as proponents of cracking down on FSA claimed, but, rather, they exclude PWD and maintain ableism. Importantly, such proposals reveal what interests are at work: economic gain at a cost to PWD. In other words, speciesist representations and restrictions imposed on nonhuman animals maintain ongoing discrimination against humans with disabilities. Thus, speciesism sustains ableism and advances particular economic interests.

Section 4.1, Section 4.2, Section 4.3 and Section 4.4 captured the emergence and development of discourse of FSA which constituted a moral panic about animals out of place, some interests at work and the ideologies that motivated such outrage. In the following section, we look closely at another victim, service dogs, by using CAS in particular to gain further understanding of interests and ideologies behind this moral panic.

4.5. Service Dogs as Equipment

Analyzing how service dogs are portrayed in these reports further explicates complex interactions of social structural oppression through truncated narratives of speciesist and anthropocentric normativity. Two themes dominate. First, service dogs are portrayed as machines or equipment. A guide dog handler said: ‘… mainly his job is to… take the place of the cane and be an obstacle avoider instead of an obstacle locator’ (Garcia 2019). A person with paralysis stated: ‘She’s basically like a living walker’ (Napoli 2013). Another highlighted: ‘he’s medical equipment to me. He’s just as important to me getting through my day independently as my power chair is…’ (Koehn 2019). A Marine veteran clarified: ‘For us, these dogs are a medical device… People should look at it no different than my cane’ (Fasbinder 2018). Service animals are devoted and essential but are depicted as mere devices, thus considered as things. Not only is the value of nonhuman animals defined by their utility to humans but their presence is tolerated to the degree to which their individual subjectivity is repressed.

An interesting process of commodity fetishism occurs: they are living, sentient beings, whose physical and emotional labour (e.g., devotion, loyalty, concern) takes place before our eyes, yet, these labour and economic contributions disappear as they are transformed into equipment, i.e., commodities (Oliver 2016). They are transformed into property of humans due to an anthropocentric view of other animals. Legally, service animals are defined as tools that perform particular tasks (Matsuoka et al. 2017; Oliver 2016, p. 242; Panford 2021) and most do not question the speciesist notion of service animals as equipment. Because they are property and equivalent to other devices, they are allowed to enter public space where other nonhuman animals cannot. Unlike FSA (as seen in Section 4.3), service animals are invisible and unobtrusive and thus do not trigger moral panic about animals out of place. Although the amazing work of service dogs demonstrates their agency and intelligence, their classification as equipment, i.e., anthropocentric views of other animals, keeps speciesist ideology and boundaries between humans and other animals intact.

The second theme characterizes service dogs as highly trained elites. Trainers spend hours, sometimes years, to perfect dogs through suppressing natural behaviours, such as urinating and defecating and making them consistently responsive to cues/commands as reliable tools to perform required tasks. Thus, they are expensive. ‘The monetary value of such fully trained guide dogs is about $50,000’ (Hobbs 2012). ‘Service animals undergo more than two years of training … Their value can be at least $50,000…’ (Resnik 2017). Chances for successfully completing training are small: ‘only 42% actually make it to be a working guide …’ (Garcia 2019). One handler explained:

the ‘big’ trainers require significant sums of money ($25,000-$50,000), the higher amounts of the dogs are bred specifically for service dog work… These trainers/organizations cater mostly to the blind and military vets with PTSD… The waitlists can be incredibly long, and if you have PTSD from non-war-related … trauma (which I do, from sexual assault), then good luck.

(Diaz 2018)

Thus, service dogs are not ordinary equipment but specialized, scarce and highly sought and -priced commodities; if produced by ‘big’ organizations and trainers, they are out of reach for many. This implies that if we limit public access, such as flying with support animals who are well-trained by certified trainers/organizations, it creates a hierarchy among individuals with disabilities, preventing public access for some. Thus, a hierarchy among disabilities is created, in which some are deserving and others not. The key point here is that the intersectionalities of oppression of speciesism, ableism and classism are at work, but hidden.

These intersectionalities became evident in December 2020 when the US Department of Transportation (DOT) revised the Air Carriers Access Act (ACAA), limiting air travel only to service animals, not ESA. Furthermore, they specified that ‘service animals’ means ‘dogs’. DOT’s assumptions reflect the two themes discussed above. Individuals must ensure their dogs are trained and compliant, and if flying longer than eight hours, they must complete a Relief Form, attesting that dogs will not urinate or defecate in the cabin and will relieve themselves in a sanitary manner. Many humans would find such restrictions difficult on long flights but this expectation is imposed on dogs because they are considered mere tools. Moreover, the onus is on individuals with service dogs to meet the requirements because disabilities are considered individual deficits.

Importantly, the DOT revealed that economic assessments played an underlying role in these revisions:

Treating ESA as service animals amounts to a price restriction that sets the price of accommodating passengers who travel with ESA at zero dollars, despite the fact that airlines face non-zero resource costs to accommodate those passengers… The final rule creates a potential burden on passengers who travel with service animals as it allows airlines to require such passengers to submit two US DOT forms. We estimate that the forms could create as much as 74,000 burden hours and $1.1 million in costs per year in 2018 dollars… The analysis indicates that the final rule could be expected to generate annual cost savings to airlines between $15.6 million and $21.6 million and annual net benefits of $3.9 to $12.7 million.

(United States Department of Transportation 2020, pp. 8–9)

While individuals with ESA are excluded, service dogs users also lose on two fronts under this revised ACAA. They lose time, labour, and costs incurred to prepare and submit forms to prove the legitimacy of service dogs. Secondly, the form sustains assumptions that disabilities are individual deficits that require specially trained dogs rather than results of systemic environmental, socio-economic and political conditions.

Disability rights movements intend to transform understanding of disabilities away from the deficit model to a social-environmental model (Dorfman 2017). However, recent ACAA revisions maintain the deficit model. Importantly, the form never questions handlers’ disabilities (doing so violates disability rights) but it sustains individualistic understandings of disabilities through assessing dogs’ eligibility. Oppression continues because social practices, such as this, are accepted as mere technical matters (Young 2011). However, these are means for maintaining biopolitical norms and privileging normalcy. Oppression and injustice persist through these social acts and systemic practices. The winners are airlines who are expected to gain millions through this revised legislation. Thus, in further response to our research question, concerning what interests are at work in this moral panic, we highlight the economic interests of airlines, who were portrayed as victims by media reports. Therefore, complex processes of the intersectionality of both ableism and classism with speciesism are revealed as a force maintaining our social systems. Intertwined systems of oppression (ableism and speciesism) are sustained further through classism. In other words, unsuspected taken-for-granted speciesism is used to truncate the dominant narratives of human relations, i.e., ableism and classism in our social systems. This sums up significant theoretical and practical implications of this study. Theoretically, it highlights the importance of analysis of speciesism and anthropocentrism. In other words, when PWD have close relationships with nonhuman animals, research ontology must reflect the realities of PWD which includes such significant human–animal relationships. Theories which are consistent with such ontology need both CAS and CDT to capture how dominant truncated narratives maintain unjust intersectional social relationships. Practically, to challenge persisting ableism we must examine speciesism and anthropocentrism at work.

5. Limitations of the Study

Our study focused on North American media and this case of moral panic may be specific to that context, where spatial restrictions applied to nonhuman animals are of particular concern and surveillance is more intense. Thus, although this can be considered as an ideal type to examine moral panic about nonhuman animals, as a qualitative case study, this does not have ‘statistical-probabilistic generalizability’ (Smith 2018) or may not generalize to a situation other than that of North America. However, methodologists argue for different types of generalizability of qualitative research (e.g., Fine 2006; Firestone 1993; Polit and Beck 2010; Smith 2018) such as analytical generalizability, provocative generalizability and reader generalizability (transferability), to name a few. Analytical generalizability is most commonly considered in terms of qualitative research (Polit and Beck 2010) and we intended to show that concepts such as speciesism, anthropocentrism and truncated narrative used in this study make sense as significant in analyzing human–animal relations. We sought to achieve some provocative generalizability which refers to ‘researchers’ attempt to move their findings toward that which is not yet imagined, not yet in practice, not yet in sight’ (Fine 2006, p. 100). Considering the limitations, future studies of a similar focus in other regions are much encouraged.

6. Conclusions

Examining recent media reports in North America about FSA highlighted the processes of construction of a moral panic over FSA. These processes employed tools such as emotional rhetoric, alarms about disorder, condemnation by experts, assumed normalcy, and calls to action to condemn villains. When we extended moral panic approaches to human-nonhuman animal relationships and apply CAS and CDT to interrogate reports of FSA, processes of intersectional oppression were illuminated. Moral panic over FSA shows that disability issues are complex, existing in broader economic, political and social power relations, which are often taken-for-granted and hidden. Exaggerated rhetoric of epidemics, flying zoos and a world taken over by nonhuman animals are efforts to maintain a boundary between culture and nature and to protect moral order based on sharply defined spatial relations between species. Entertainment-oriented media reports sensationalized FSA as animals out of place and heinous disruptions of social order. However, introducing challenges to speciesism and anthropocentrism from CAS and critical views of disabilities from CDT, the paper disclosed truncated dominant narratives in this moral panic, illuminating economic and political interests and underlying ideologies. The ostensible threat in a moral panic over FSA is that persons with “deserving” disabilities may face difficulties because unruly imposters create opposition to the presence of legitimate animals in public. Thus, outrage is easily mobilized against imposters, engaged in misrepresentation to gain special privilege.

Moral panic over FSA is manufactured by manipulating the underlining misconception that equal opportunities, such as public access, are considered not as rights or normalcy but a privilege for people with certain disabilities. Creating moral panic is not difficult, considering that the public and courts still failed to recognize disability rights as civil rights (Davis 2015; Dorfman 2017; Johnson 2002), decades after the ADA (1990) and Canadian Charter of Rights (1982) did so. Misgivings about disabilities are rooted in deeper suspicions about the ‘disability con’—widespread perception of fraud by those claiming disability rights (Dorfman 2019). Such suspicions are reflected in the social construction of disability where essentialist views of disabilities as deficit dominate, and invisible disabilities remain suspect (Pothier and Devlin 2006). Adding nonhuman animals into the situation facilitates the removal of constraints on expression of suspicion and ridicule of disabilities, especially those not immediately visible (Price 2017; Wlodarczyk 2019). This was the case in a moral panic over FSA which is constructed at the cost of people with disabilities, rather than supporting them. The moral panic framework is useful to unpack such complex issues of disabilities and animals and to illuminate processes of intersectionality resulting in both ongoing discrimination against humans with disabilities and speciesist restrictions imposed on nonhuman animals. Thus, intersectional analyses of ableism and speciesism reveal the co-determination of processes of exclusion to maintain normalcy. Interrogating conceptions of service dogs in these reports through the use of concepts of speciesism, anthropocentrism, and truncated narrative of domination, discloses further the intersectionality of not only ableism but also classism with speciesism as a force shaping and maintaining our social systems. Thus, the implication of this study is that it is critical to expand our ontology for research and activism to examine speciesist and anthropocentric power relations in intersectional analysis to dismantle ableist oppressive relationships and consider social justice beyond humans. We contend that examining speciesist power relations strengthens analyses of human oppressions by unveiling mechanisms of sustained injustice. In other words, understanding trans-species social justice will help to dismantle oppressive relationships.