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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A central Nebraska university sued by the U.S. Justice Department after it banned a therapy dog from student housing is seeking a protective order to prevent what it calls a "fishing expedition" by government attorneys.
An attorney for the University of Nebraska at Kearney said in court documents filed Monday that government attorneys are demanding more than 51,000 electronically stored documents regarding any person with a disability that sought any type of accommodation from the university — including employees and the general public seeking accommodations for areas outside of UNK housing. The school says that's overly broad and would cost it nearly $159,000 to produce and review, in addition to the $110,000 it has spent to gather and review nearly 4,300 documents already given to the government.
The Justice Department "has no evidence UNK engaged in disparate treatment and may not use this litigation as a mechanism to justify its fishing expedition to try to drum up evidence that UNK engaged in disparate treatment," attorney Scott P. Moore, of Omaha, wrote in a brief opposing Justice Department attorney's request for the additional documents.
The Justice Department sued the university, the University of Nebraska Board of Regents and several officials in November 2011, saying the university unlawfully denied Brittany Hamilton the chance to keep a 4-pound miniature pinscher named Butch in her university-owned apartment a mile off campus to cope with depression and anxiety. In barring the dog, the lawsuit alleges, the university violated the U.S. Fair Housing Act.
The university bars pets other than fish from its housing unless the student has a disability that requires a service animal or works as a hall director.
The Justice Department lawsuit says Hamilton could not afford other housing options in or around Kearney and needed the dog to focus on her schoolwork. An Omaha nurse prescribed the dog to help Hamilton handle anxiety attacks that made it difficult to sleep and breathe.
In its brief to compel the university to turn over the documents, the Justice Department argues that UNK has had years to produce them and asked that the court order UNK to turn over all electronically stored documents pertaining to the school's disability policies and its treatment of other requests for disability accommodations.
UNK's argument that its disability policies outside of student housing aren't applicable to the lawsuit are flawed, government attorneys said.
"It is undisputed that the policies and practices challenged by the United States apply outside of the housing context, and that the small group of high-ranking UNK officials who denied the reasonable accommodation requests that gave rise to this lawsuit also apply disability policies in the education, employment, and campus-visitor, as well as housing, contexts," the government's brief said.
A trial is set for early next year.
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