That we allowed the proliferation of emotional support animals in the first place tells us a lot about the evolving nature of the civil rights industry. A network of activists, judges, and legal academics created the conceptual basis for identifying new categories of injury, all deriving their ultimate power from the landmark legislation required to dismantle legalized segregation in America. A network of trial lawyers and medical entrepreneurs found a profitable niche in colluding with a growing number of Americans regarding themselves through the prism of victimhood that happens to confer legally protected status onto them. In the process, these networks constituted themselves as an interest group.

Over time, they grew powerful enough to cannibalize the very people for whose benefit the system was inaugurated in the first place: thus, Black Man Kicked Off Plane So That Dog Gets to Fly First Class…

If a duly certified clinician determines that your childhood trauma gives you a right to do what others are constrained from doing, even if it imposes costs and burdens that others must bear, on what grounds does an airline, a federal agency, or a federal judge declare otherwise? If the trauma is severe enough, wouldn’t it be both an intolerable cruelty and a violation of civil rights law to deny the person what medical science has decreed that they need? Wouldn’t it, in fact, be tantamount to a form of literal violence?