Pet deposits and pet rent for an emotional support animal in Montana
Montana
This is the question the rest of the internet is most confidently wrong about, because the guidance it relies on was rescinded.
What used to be true
HUD's 2020 assistance animal notice said plainly that an assistance animal is not a pet, and that a housing provider may not charge a pet fee, a pet deposit or pet rent for one. Almost every page you will find on this subject is still repeating that sentence.
What changed
On 22 May 2026 HUD permanently rescinded its 2020 assistance animal notice and narrowed its own enforcement to animals individually trained to do work or perform tasks for a person with a disability. That is the Americans with Disabilities Act service animal test, and an emotional support animal does not meet it. A complaint to HUD about a refused emotional support animal is now unlikely to produce a finding of reasonable cause.
So the confident no has become a genuinely contested question. The reasonable accommodation principle it rested on is still in the statute, and a court can still find that charging a pet fee for an assistance animal defeats the accommodation. What has gone is the agency guidance a tenant used to be able to point at.
Where that leaves Montana
Montana has its own fair housing statute, the Montana Human Rights Act (Mont. Code Ann. § 49-2-305), enforced by the Montana Human Rights Bureau. A state complaint runs on state law, so HUD changing its own enforcement priorities does not decide it.
Montana also legislated on emotional support animals directly, which most states have not. These are the sections that matter:
- Mont. Code Ann. § 70-24-114: Enacted by HB 703 in 2023 and amended by SB 149 in 2025, this section sets out what a landlord may require for an assistance animal, what a provider must do before issuing documentation, and graduated penalties for fraudulent documentation.
Deposit rules in Montana
With the federal guidance withdrawn, the argument runs on ordinary Montana landlord-tenant law, which is where most of the real variation between states now sits.
- Montana sets no statutory ceiling on a residential security deposit, so the amount is whatever the lease says and the market bears.
- A deposit has to be returned within 10 days of the end of the tenancy.
- Montana does not permit a genuinely non-refundable pet fee. A charge called a fee is treated as a deposit and has to be accounted for, which matters because a refundable deposit is a far weaker thing for a landlord to insist on.
Montana pairs the shortest deposit return deadline in the country with a prohibition on non-refundable pet fees, which is a sharper tenant protection than the absent cap suggests.
If you move
A letter is tied to the licence of the clinician who wrote it, not to your lease. Moving out of Montana does not void it, but a new housing provider is entitled to reliable documentation, and a clinician licensed only in Montana is a weaker answer to that question once you live somewhere else. Montana sits in the Mountain, and the rules next door are not the same.
Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah run on the federal position plus their own fair housing statute, much as Montana does.
What is not in doubt
- You remain liable for damage the animal actually causes, everywhere, and always did. An accommodation is not an indemnity.
- A provider may apply an ordinary damage deposit that it applies to every tenant, animal or not.
- A refundable deposit and a non-refundable pet fee are different things and get argued about differently.
- Nothing here stops a provider agreeing to waive a fee, and many still do rather than litigate.
Nobody can tell you from a web page whether you qualify, and any site in Montana that says everyone does is selling something. An emotional support animal letter rests on a licensed clinician evaluating you and concluding that you have a disability and that the animal helps with it. That review can come back no, and when it does here, the fee is refunded.
Common questions
- Can my Montana landlord charge pet rent for an emotional support animal in 2026?
- Montana has its own statute on assistance animals, so the argument runs on those sections rather than on rescinded HUD guidance. That is a stronger position than tenants have in most states.
- Can I get a pet deposit refunded that I already paid?
- Ask, in writing, once the accommodation is granted, and keep the request. Whether you can compel it is exactly the contested question above.
- Does this apply to airlines too?
- No, and it has not since 2021. The Department of Transportation stopped requiring airlines to treat emotional support animals as service animals, so in the air an emotional support animal travels as a pet, under the airline's pet rules and fees.
Sources for this page: Montana Free Press, HB 703 bill tracker; Animal Legal and Historical Center, Montana assistance animal laws. Last reviewed 2026-09-15. This is a plain description of what the law says, not legal advice.