A family in Lakeside Park is suing the city over its law against keeping chickens, alleging it violates the Fair Housing Act, a federal law that prohibits discrimination in providing housing.
More specifically, the family’s complaint alleges the city ordinance’s “blanket prohibition on chickens, without any exception for assistance animals under state or federal law, contravenes such law by denying reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities.”
The suit is the latest in a series of obstacles the Wilson family has encountered in trying to lawfully own the chickens. The Wilsons have lived in Lakeside Park since 2013. Jim Wilson said they purchased the chickens a couple of years after moving into their home. Jim Wilson, his wife, Beth Wilson, and their daughter employ the chickens as a tool for managing their daughter’s autism.
“It’s [caring for the chickens] a tool for someone that’s autistic to have routine, and it’s good to maintain routine at any age,” Jim Wilson told LINK nky this spring. He reiterated this in July when we spoke with him again.
“One of the key aspects of having a child with autism is you pretty much have to have their day planned out, 24/7,” Jim Wilson said.
The suit lists the first citation from Kenton County Planning and Development Services, known more commonly as PDS, against the Wilsons as occurring in January. Prior to the citations, the Wilsons believed the chickens were allowed. The city began prohibiting chickens under its nuisance ordinance around 2015, but the Wilsons figured they would have been grandfathered in.
In March 2025, after various interactions with PDS, they went before the Kenton County Code Enforcement Board to plead their case. During the hearing, the Wilsons cited literature from Psychology Today and their family’s own medical documentation in an effort to demonstrate the efficacy and necessity of chickens as therapy animals.
More correspondence from their daughter’s healthcare providers, as well as various articles from newsletters and other publications purporting the chickens’ efficacy as therapy animals, are included as exhibits in the Wilsons’ complaint.
Melissa Dyer, a registered nurse who appears in some of the documentation, writes, “[the Wilsons’ daughter] has raised chickens at her home for the past 10 years. She has been their primary caregiver since they hatched. [The] chickens provide a large degree of structure which is essential for those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (‘ASD’). [She] feeds the chickens, cleans their coop and sits and reads with them. Her parents report that this structure has helped [her] accomplish graduating high school, making it through COVID and graduating from Cincinnati State.”
Before the code enforcement hearing, the Wilsons said they had reached out to Lakeside Park Mayor Paul Markgraf, asking him to speak to the board and advocate for a continuance on the citation. At the same time, the city worked out a proposal for a new ordinance that would allow the chickens, but Markgraf declined, hoping to stay neutral and let PDS complete its process.
Meeting minutes from the code enforcement hearing corroborate this: Greg Voss, who serves as the attorney for both the code enforcement board and the Lakeside Park council, “read a text he received from the mayor which read that the [appellants] respectfully asked for him to persuade the [Board] to grant a continuance until their next meeting and he respectfully declined.” The minutes also indicated that Voss “mentioned that the mayor was not in favor of a continuance.”
The minutes state the Wilsons’ medical documents could not be entered into the evidence record for confidentiality reasons, but one of the board members, Taylor Mill Rep. Roger Braden “stated that this is an atypical case with a medical and therapeutic basis to it and action has been taken to make changes but could be more than sixty days,” the minutes read. “He made a motion to carry the case over for ninety days.”
The board was “sympathetic,” Jim Wilson said, so the motion passed, giving the Wilsons 90 days – until June 12 – to work it out with the city.
Lakeside Park City Councilmember Cassi Schabell introduced a draft ordinance in February that would have allowed the keeping of chickens. After some revisions, the council eventually voted the proposal down in a 4-1 vote in April. Schabell was the only council member who voted for the passage of the ordinance.
“I just think the council should have put people over politics,” Schabell said when asked about the suit. “They could have just let people have their chickens.”
Schabell’s interactions with the rest of the council and the mayor have been adversarial at times, and the Wilsons expressed a worry when we interviewed them in the spring that the peculiar dynamic on the council might subsume their chances at getting a fair shake.
The Wilsons and other Lakeside Park residents – as well as some people who were not city residents, such as Elsmere’s “chicken man,” Eric Bunzow, who recently advocated for chicken regulations at the state level – came out to the city council meeting on March 10 to voice their views on the matter.
Opinions were mixed: Some didn’t seem to have an issue with the chickens, whereas others were worried about the possibility of noise, foul (no pun intended) odors and the potential of attracting pests (points the Wilsons are skeptical of). A lengthy public comment period also characterized the April meeting, where the ordinance was voted down.
The Wilsons met with Markgraf again on May 20 to discuss an application process for a possible variance that was compliant with the law. Still, the suit alleges the mayor “refused to provide assistance to the Wilsons.”
PDS code enforcement upheld the citation at its meeting on June 12, refusing, the suit alleges, to “grant the Wilsons a reasonable accommodation to permit [their daughter] to keep the medical assistance chickens at her home” and imposing a fine of $2. A subsequent meeting with David Wigger, the chair of Lakeside Park’s Variance Board, likewise failed to yield any results.
The Wilsons expressed frustration and confusion, wondering why the process had become so difficult and why none of the officials they had met with seemed willing to meet them halfway.
“The sidewalks have to be ADA compliant,” Beth Wilson observed.
“It seems like a simple matter,” James Wilson said. “I don’t get it. I don’t get the big resistance.”
The city has until Sept. 2 to file a response to the Wilsons’ complaint.
When contacted, Markgraf declined to comment on pending litigation, but informed LINK nky that the city was working on creating a formal process by which residents could request reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.