A candidate statement mailed with the ballots is 'association media', court rules
A candidate statement mailed with the ballots is 'association media', court rules
2026-09-09 · California · Courts
A California appeals court has held that a candidate statement an association prints and mails with its ballots is “association media” — so a director facing recall was entitled to include her own statement opposing it.
Arroyo v. Pacific Ridge Neighborhood Homeowners Assn., No. D084293, (2025) 116 Cal.App.5th 627, was filed November 4, 2025 as unpublished and ordered published on December 2, 2025. The California Supreme Court denied review on March 18, 2026 (S294225). It is final and citable.1
What happened
Rachel Arroyo was a sitting director. A member circulated a petition to recall her.
The association distributed recall ballot materials that included a candidate statement from the sole candidate seeking to replace her. Arroyo asked to include her own statement opposing the recall. The elections inspector refused, relying on an association election rule excluding “request to serve forms.”
Arroyo sued for violation of Civil Code section 5105, along with Corporations Code sections 5513 and 5222, and for negligence against the inspector. After a bench trial the court found for the association.
Reversed
“Association media” in section 5105 means “means by which something is communicated or expressed,” and it encompasses the candidate statement circulated with the ballot materials.
The court's reasoning ran in four steps. The plain meaning of “media” — any “channel or system of communication” — is dispositive. Section 5105 is remedial and liberally construed. The Legislature intended substantial protection against manipulation in association voting. And a board-created rule cannot narrow a statutory protection, because under Civil Code section 4205 the Act prevails over governing documents.
Once the association gave one member advocating a viewpoint access to its own election mailing, section 5105(a)(1) required equal access for Arroyo.
But the election is not automatically void
This is the half that matters most to boards. The court stressed that a section 5105 violation does not automatically invalidate an election.
On remand, the trial court must give the association the opportunity to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the noncompliance did not affect the election results, and must state its findings in writing — the framework in Civil Code section 5145.
Disposition: reversed and remanded. Arroyo recovers costs on appeal. The court did not reach her negligence claim or her Corporations Code section 7222(b)(1) argument, treating both as premature.
What it changes for boards and managers
The trigger is the association's own choice to carry advocacy. Nothing requires an association to include candidate statements in its election mailing. But if it includes one member's, it has opened association media, and every member advocating a viewpoint on that measure is entitled to equal access.
This is a genuinely manageable rule, and the manageable response is a decision made before the mailing goes out: either the association carries statements from everyone advocating on the question, or it carries none.
It reaches more than director elections. Section 5105 governs election rules for director elections, recalls, votes on special assessments, and other membership votes requiring a secret ballot. The equal-access principle applies across all of them. An association mailing a board-authored argument in favour of a special assessment, alongside the ballot, has engaged this holding.
An election rule cannot shrink the statute. The association here had a rule excluding a category of statement, and the rule lost. Boards reviewing their election rules should look specifically for provisions that limit who may use association media or what may be said — those are the provisions section 4205 defeats.
The inspector's reliance on the rule did not save the association. An inspector of elections applying the association's own written rule still produced a statutory violation. Delegating the decision to a professional inspector does not transfer the risk.
The remedy structure cuts both ways. An association that finds itself on the wrong side of section 5105 is not automatically facing a voided election — but it carries the burden of showing the violation did not affect the result, and it must do so on a record it did not create with that burden in mind. Contemporaneous documentation of vote margins and of what was actually distributed is what makes that showing possible.
How this interacts with the notice changes coming in 2027
Association election practice is about to change on a separate track, and the two need reading together.
AB 1892, signed on August 31, 2026 as Chapter 169, Statutes of 2026, cuts the election by acclamation initial notice from at least 90 days before the nomination deadline to at least 30 days, and changes the reminder notice from a 7-to-30-day window to not less than 10 days. It also narrows the section 5105 electronic voting notice so it runs to each member who is electronically voting rather than to all members. Its operative date is January 1, 2027.
An association revising its election rules for those changes is already opening the document. That is the moment to fix any provision Arroyo makes unenforceable, rather than running two separate rule amendments — each of which requires a 28-day member comment period under Civil Code section 4360.
The transparency measure that would have gone further, and died
No further movement here is likely soon. AB 1184, the Homeowner Association Accountability and Transparency Act of 2026, would have excluded operating rule amendments from the secret ballot requirement, required minutes to record director attendance and individual votes on operating rules, and made meeting recordings inspectable records.
It passed the Assembly 69–0 and the Senate 38–0 and then died on August 31 without an Assembly concurrence vote. Because 2026 closed a two-year session, it cannot return; a successor would be a new bill in the session convening December 2026.
What to watch next
The remand. The trial court must now decide whether the association can carry its section 5145 burden, and must state its findings in writing — which will produce a record on how demanding the “did not affect the results” showing actually is.
That is the question with the most practical value left in this case. Arroyo settles what association media means; it leaves open how easily an association escapes the consequences of getting it wrong.
Related California HOA Topics
- Arroyo v. Pacific Ridge Neighborhood Homeowners Assn., No. D084293 — slip opinion, Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division One ↩
- Publication order, Judicial Branch of California (December 2, 2025) ↩
- California Supreme Court, results of the petition conference of March 18, 2026 (S294225, review denied) ↩
- Civil Code § 5105, California Legislative Information — election rules and the association media access requirement ↩
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