A fashion blogger claims she and her psychiatrist-approved emotional support animal were booted from the Soho House by a snooty supervisor who didn’t believe in the dog’s therapeutic powers.
“Show me what your dog does of service to you,” the downtown hotspot’s membership manager Karen Pinckney-Sanchez barked, according to a lawsuit.
Hyun Jae Jung, whose 49,000 Instagram followers know her as Miju Bijou, says she needs her beloved French bulldog Pizza Giovannino by her side because she’s “disabled.”
Bijou and Pizza, a small white Frenchie she totes around town and calls her “son,” were dining at the club, where membership costs more than $2,000 a year, court papers say.
Bijou explained Pizza’s “therapeutic value” and that a psychiatrist had recommended the animal, but Pinckney-Sanchez apparently wasn’t buying it.
Bijou and Pizza were booted “in the middle of her meal” and the next day, her membership with seven months remaining to Soho House was terminated. Bijou is suing the famed Meatpacking District club in Manhattan Supreme Court for violating her civil rights.
She calls the dog discrimination “oppressive” and insists in her lawsuit she has “a disability recognized by a licensed psychiatrist.” She doesn’t identify the disability.
Celebs like Justin Bieber, DJ Calvin Harris and Madonna have partied at the club, a chain which originated in London and was made famous on an episode of “Sex and the City.”
“Service dogs and emotional support animals are essential tools for people with disabilities, accompanying them in public places and facilitating their assimilation into society,” Bijou lectures in her legal filing.
She wants unspecified damages and a court order allowing her and Pizza to party there together again.
Soho House called the allegations “totally without merit.”