North Dakota Pet and ESA Laws: The Landlord and Tenant Guide

Animals in a North Dakota rental fall into two very different legal buckets, and confusing them is where most landlord liability begins. An ordinary pet is governed by the lease and North Dakota law, so a landlord may set pet rules, charge a pet deposit within the statutory ceiling, and charge pet rent. A service animal or emotional support animal is not a pet under the federal Fair Housing Act, so the pet rules, fees, breed limits, and weight limits simply do not apply to it. North Dakota Century Code Section 47-16-07.1 lets a landlord add a pet security deposit up to the greater of two thousand five hundred dollars or two months’ rent on top of the one-month base cap, yet the same statute bars any pet deposit for a service or companion animal a tenant with a disability needs. This guide walks the whole framework so you can stay compliant.

Below you will find how North Dakota treats pet deposits, pet fees, and pet rent for an actual pet, the difference between a service animal and an emotional support animal, the single federal rule that an assistance animal is not a pet, the documentation you may and may not request, the North Dakota service-animal statutes in chapter 25-13, the fake-service-animal infraction, the fraudulent-documentation eviction remedy, when you may deny a specific animal, and a step-by-step compliant process for both landlords and tenants. Where the analysis touches deposits, the details ride on the North Dakota security deposit laws.

Because the housing analysis turns on one distinction, the safest posture for a landlord is to run two separate tracks: a written pet policy for actual pets, and a reasonable-accommodation process for every assistance-animal request. The strongest position for a tenant is to know that a service animal or emotional support animal cannot be charged a pet deposit, a pet fee, or pet rent, and cannot be met with a breed or weight limit. Treat every figure and rule here as a starting point and verify the current law before you charge, pay, or dispute anything.

Before the North Dakota-specific rules, a landlord must understand that assistance-animal law is primarily federal. Three statutes create overlapping obligations for every rental property owner in the country, and none of them can be overridden by a state statute, a city ordinance, an HOA covenant, or a lease clause. State law can add protection on top of federal law, but it cannot subtract from it.

The federal Fair Housing Act, Title 42 of the United States Code, Section 3601 and following, prohibits disability discrimination in housing, including a refusal to make a reasonable accommodation. It is the primary source of emotional-support-animal protection and applies to virtually all rental housing, from apartments and single-family rentals to condominiums. The Americans with Disabilities Act, Title 42 of the United States Code, Section 12101 and following, covers service animals in places of public accommodation, such as a rental office lobby or a pool open to the public, and does not govern emotional support animals; the ADA definition of a service animal excludes an emotional-support-only animal. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, Title 29 of the United States Code, Section 794, prohibits disability discrimination by programs that receive federal financial assistance, reaching public housing, voucher properties, and any housing that has received HUD funding.

HUD set out its interpretation of the Fair Housing Act’s assistance-animal rules in Notice FHEO-2020-01, issued January 28, 2020 — but that notice is no longer in force. HUD rescinded it, together with its 2013 predecessor, on September 17, 2025, and permanently reconfirmed the rescission in an FHEO enforcement memorandum dated May 22, 2026, so it should not be cited as the controlling documentation standard.

The substantive law did not change. The Fair Housing Act itself, at 42 U.S.C. Section 3604(f)(3)(B), and its reasonable-accommodation regulation, 24 C.F.R. Section 100.204, are unchanged and still require the accommodation; 24 C.F.R. Section 5.303 still provides that pet rules do not apply to animals used to assist, support, or provide service to a person with a disability in HUD-assisted housing, and that regulation is not limited to trained animals. What narrowed is enforcement posture: HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity will now find reasonable cause only where the animal is individually trained to perform work or tasks directly related to the disability, so it will generally not pursue a complaint about an untrained emotional support animal. HUD expressly did not address Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act or the Americans with Disabilities Act, and expressly preserved a tenant’s right to bring a private action in court.

The Fair Housing Act’s reach is broad but not unlimited. It exempts an owner-occupied building of four or fewer units where the owner rents without an agent, the so-called Mrs. Murphy exemption, and a single-family home sold or rented by an owner without a broker, subject to conditions. These exemptions are narrower than most landlords assume, and they do not exempt housing from advertising-based claims or from state fair-housing law. In North Dakota, the North Dakota Housing Discrimination Act, North Dakota Century Code Chapter 14-02.5, operates alongside the federal Fair Housing Act and covers some housing that federal law does not.

Pet deposits, pet fees, and pet rent are the most common point of daily confusion between landlords and tenants, and the single most common reason a tenant files a fair-housing complaint. The rules break into two very different tracks depending on whether the animal is a pet or an assistance animal.

The Security Deposit Baseline in North Dakota

North Dakota’s deposit framework is set by North Dakota Century Code Section 47-16-07.1. The base security deposit a landlord may demand is capped at one month’s rent. The statute allows a higher base deposit of up to two months’ rent from a tenant who has been convicted of a felony, where the conviction relates to circumstances that would threaten other tenants or the property. That base cap is the number the live guide sometimes calls the North Dakota deposit ceiling, but it is only the starting figure, because the same section separately authorizes a pet deposit on top of it.

North Dakota Pet Deposit Rules

This is the detail North Dakota gets more specific about than most states, and the point earlier versions of this guide stated backward. Under North Dakota Century Code Section 47-16-07.1, a landlord may charge a separate, additional pet security deposit for keeping an animal, and that pet deposit may not exceed the greater of two thousand five hundred dollars or an amount equal to two months’ rent. It is the greater of the two figures, not the lesser, and it is added on top of the one-month base deposit rather than folded inside it. So when two months’ rent is more than two thousand five hundred dollars, the higher rent figure is the pet-deposit ceiling; when two months’ rent is less, two thousand five hundred dollars controls.

That ceiling is a legal maximum, not a market rate. In practice, the dollar figures North Dakota landlords actually charge track the local rental market rather than any statutory number. A typical North Dakota pet deposit runs from about two hundred to five hundred dollars per pet in smaller markets and can reach seven hundred fifty dollars or more in higher-rent metros. Some landlords charge a single pet deposit; others assess per-animal charges that scale with the number or size of the pets. Whichever structure a landlord chooses, the lease must clearly identify what the charge covers and whether it is refundable.

Pet Rent and Nonrefundable Pet Fees

Pet rent is a separate concept from a pet deposit. A pet deposit is a one-time sum held against future damage; pet rent is an ongoing monthly fee paid with rent. North Dakota law does not cap the amount of pet rent, so market-rate pet rent commonly runs about twenty-five to seventy-five dollars per month per pet, with higher-end urban properties sometimes charging more. Because pet rent is ongoing income rather than held money, it is treated separately from the deposit ceiling. Whether a landlord may collect a genuinely nonrefundable pet fee depends on how the charge is drafted; the safest structure is a refundable pet deposit within the statutory ceiling plus a modest, clearly disclosed cleaning fee tied to a specific end-of-tenancy purpose.

Breed restrictions are among the most litigated parts of a rental pet policy. Three legal layers interact: state preemption of municipal breed rules, private landlord pet policy, and the absolute overlay that a breed restriction cannot be applied to a verified assistance animal.

State Preemption and Private Landlord Breed Policies

North Dakota has no statewide breed preemption, and preemption in any event usually targets what cities and counties may ban, not what a private landlord may write into a lease. A private landlord in North Dakota may generally impose a breed restriction on an ordinary pet. Common restrictions target pit bull types, Rottweilers, Doberman Pinschers, German Shepherds, Akitas, Chows, and wolf hybrids, and landlords typically cite an insurance carrier’s exclusions as the rationale. An insurance-based breed policy is legitimate when the insurer actually excludes coverage for the breed.

The Assistance-Animal Exception Is Absolute

No breed restriction may be applied to a verified assistance animal. A landlord cannot categorically refuse a breed when the animal is serving as an emotional support animal or an ADA service animal: the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. Section 3604(f)(3)(B), and 24 C.F.R. Section 100.204 do not permit a categorical breed rule to be applied to an animal that is a required reasonable accommodation. The only permitted basis for denying a specific assistance animal is individualized, objective evidence that this particular animal poses a direct threat to health or safety, or would cause substantial physical damage, not that the breed as a category is presumed dangerous. A documented prior attack tied to that animal can support denial; a newspaper article about a breed cannot.

Weight and Size Limits

A weight limit stands on the same footing as a breed limit. A landlord may cap the weight of an ordinary pet but cannot apply that cap to a verified assistance animal. A ninety-pound service dog stays regardless of the pet weight cap on the rest of the building, and many North Dakota landlords learn this when a qualifying tenant moves in with a large mobility-assistance dog.

The emotional-support-animal category is where landlord confusion is highest and where the gap between common belief and the actual rule is widest. An emotional support animal is an animal that alleviates one or more identified symptoms or effects of a person’s disability. It is not a task-trained service animal, it is not limited to dogs, and it is not required to wear a vest, carry an identification card, be registered, or be certified by any organization. No such registration exists under federal law, and a website that claims to register an emotional support animal is selling a document with no legal weight.

What Qualifies an Animal as an ESA

Three elements must be present. First, the person seeking the accommodation must have a disability within the meaning of the Fair Housing Act, a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. Second, the person must have a disability-connected need for the animal, meaning the animal does something specific that reduces the impact of the disability. Third, the accommodation must be reasonable, meaning it does not impose an undue financial or administrative burden or fundamentally alter the landlord’s operations.

Under the Fair Housing Act and 24 C.F.R. Section 100.204, the disability and the disability-connected need must be documented by a reliable third party when the disability is not obvious. For most emotional support animals, that documentation is a letter from a licensed health provider — a therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, physician, nurse practitioner, or licensed clinical social worker — stating that the tenant has a disability and that the animal assists with it. The letter does not need to name the diagnosis, and a landlord cannot demand a diagnosis. In North Dakota, the North Dakota Housing Discrimination Act, North Dakota Century Code Chapter 14-02.5, parallels the federal law and provides a state remedy for assistance-animal discrimination. For a deeper walkthrough of what a sound letter looks like, see our emotional support animal guide.

Species Considerations

The Fair Housing Act does not limit an emotional support animal to a dog. Cats, rabbits, small birds, and other domestic animals are routinely approved. HUD recognizes that the scope is not unlimited, though: an animal that poses a health risk, is prohibited by local law, or is not commonly kept in a household may be denied on species grounds. A unique animal, such as a snake, a primate, or livestock, faces a higher bar, because the tenant must show a disability-connected need specific to that species that a more conventional animal cannot meet. The bar is meaningfully higher for those animals than for a dog or a cat.