HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - July 6, 2012
Published: Fri, 07/06/12
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Is Your HOA Ready for Election-Year Free Speech Issues?
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In this week's tip, we help you get your free-speech-during-an-
election-year rules squared away in time for the presidential
contest just months away. Here are two tips for creating and
enforcing rules on political speech.
1. Know the law.
"I tell my clients to follow the law," says Jim Comin, president
of The Management Trust--CDC, an association management firm in
Kirkland, Wash.
Your state may govern how you govern owners' political speech,
so be sure you understand your state's law before crafting your
HOA's rules. "There's a statute in California--section 1353.6 of
the civil code--that allows home owners to put up political
signs of certain dimensions on their own personal property,"
says James R. McCormick Jr., a partner at Peters & Freedman LLP
in Encinitas, Calif., who represents associations. "But there can
be limitations, and the statute itself provides specific
examples."
In Washington, a statute prohibits HOAs from banning political
signs on owners' property, but there's no similar law governing
condo associations. "The law was unclear until 2005, when a law
went into effect that basically says the governing rules of a
community may not prohibit the display of political signs by a
resident before any primary or election," says Comin. "But both
condos and HOAs can include reasonable rules and regulations
regarding the manner and placement of display."
2. Know the difference between rules for private property and
common areas.
Your state may force you to allow owners to post political signs
on their own property--like their lawn. But you may be able to
ban political signs on association-owned property.
"We went through this issue with a politician who lived in a
large-scale community," says Comin. "He put his signs in the
common areas of his HOA in 2003 or 2004, so at that point there
was no law governing this issue. We got into a battle with him.
We told him he needed to take the signs down, and he said, 'It's
my constitutional right to put them up.' We told him that doesn't
apply to HOAs because he'd chosen to give up some individual
rights by belonging to this entity. We fought him until election
day, and then he happily removed them. He didn't win the election.
Furthermore, I got my revenge when I read an article a few years
later about how he famously had been publicly mean to others--and
I thought he was mean to me!"
Learn all "6 Tips for Balancing Election-Year Free Speech with HOA
Rules" in our new article:
http://www.hoaleader.com/members/736.cfm
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President
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