Interesting …if the decision was 50-50, does that mean no permission or no refusal? I guess it’s the former but it sounds like your friend has very good grounds to take to the mediation.
If the EC wants to ban pets on principle, they need to change their by-laws (and that ain’t going to happen if the EC vote reflects the feeling of of the owners).
Compromise is the key to successful mediation and if your friend offers to allow reasonable conditions to be applied to the permission, that should play well at the CTTT (if it gets that far).