2026-09-10 · Arizona · Courts

The Arizona Supreme Court declined on September 8, 2026 to review a decision holding that a planned community board may discuss matters privately but must vote in the open. The denial makes A Z N H Revocable Trust v. Sunland Springs Village Homeowners Association final and binding on Arizona associations.¹

Division One of the Court of Appeals issued the published opinion on April 28, 2026. The Supreme Court's order, entered as docket entry 8 in CV-26-0167-PR, reads simply that the petition for review is denied.²

What the board had been doing

The facts are unusually concrete for a statutory-construction case, and they explain why the dispute was worth taking to the Supreme Court. In its closed meetings, the Sunland Springs board had, among other things:

• approved a $917,000 budget item;
• granted the community manager up to $7,000 in discretionary spending authority;
• addressed 13 waivers of the community's minimum age requirement for residents; and
• authorized foreclosures against two homeowners.

For notice, the association supplied members the date, time and place of closed meetings and quoted the language of A.R.S. § 33-1804(A). A homeowner filed a declaratory judgment action in December 2023.

The holding on voting

Section 33-1804(A) allows a portion of a meeting to be closed if the closed portion is “limited to consideration of” seven listed subjects. The association argued that consideration includes deciding.

The court's answer turned on a different sentence of the same subsection — the one requiring a board to let a member speak “once after the board has discussed a specific agenda item but before the board takes formal action on that item.” As the opinion puts it, if § 33-1804(A) allowed associations to vote in a closed meeting, “then a member could not speak after discussion but before formal action on a closed-meeting agenda item. We cannot adopt an interpretation that renders statutory language a nullity.”

Consideration, in other words, is deliberation. Action belongs in the open meeting.

1. A Z N H Revocable Trust v. Sunland Springs Village HOA, 1 CA-CV 25-0424 (Ariz. App. Div. One, Apr. 28, 2026) — published opinion ↩
2. Arizona Supreme Court docket, CV-26-0167-PR — petition for review denied September 8, 2026 ↩
3. A.R.S. § 33-1804, Open meetings; exceptions; notice; agenda ↩
4. SB 1290, Chapter 222, Laws 2026 — the “without action” amendment, effective September 12, 2026 ↩