Colorado HOA Political Signs

Section 1: Overview — How political signs are regulated in Colorado HOAs

Colorado law draws a firm line. It bars a homeowners' association from prohibiting a sign that an owner or occupant displays within the boundaries of the unit or in a window, it forbids the association from regulating that sign based on its subject matter, message, or content, and it overrides any covenant that says otherwise.¹ That protection lives in the Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act, or CCIOA, at C.R.S. § 38-33.3-106.5, a section the legislature titled "Prohibitions contrary to public policy." The sign language sits in subsection (1)(c).¹

Here is a point many older guides get wrong: the current statute uses no election-season window, no fixed size ceiling, and no one-sign-per-contest cap. House Bill 21-1310, which the governor signed on July 2, 2021 and which took effect September 7, 2021, repealed the earlier political-sign language — the 45-day-before / 7-day-after election window, the 36-inch-by-48-inch cap, and the one-per-contested-office limit — and replaced all of it with a broad, content-neutral rule that covers every noncommercial sign.² An association may still prohibit signs that carry commercial messages, and it may adopt reasonable, content-neutral rules on number, placement, or size.¹

The protection is statutory, not constitutional. A Colorado HOA is a private entity, not a state actor, so the First Amendment does not apply to it; the owner's protection comes from CCIOA.³ That places Colorado among the owner-protective states, alongside California (Civil Code § 4710), Texas (Property Code §§ 202.009 and 202.0091), and Arizona (A.R.S. §§ 33-1808 and 33-1261), and in contrast to states where a recorded covenant ban controls.⁴ The sections that follow set out the statutory text, explain why the protection is statutory rather than constitutional, show how the statute interacts with the CC&Rs, lay out the operational rules, and survey recent legislative and judicial activity.

Section 2: The legal framework for political signs

2A. The statute that protects political signs

CCIOA § 38-33.3-106.5(1) tells an association that, "notwithstanding any provision in the declaration, bylaws, or rules and regulations of the association to the contrary," it shall not prohibit a list of displays and activities.¹ Subsection (1)(c) is the sign provision. It protects "the display of a sign by the owner or occupant of a unit on property within the boundaries of the unit or in a window of the unit," and it directs that the association "shall not prohibit or regulate the display of window signs or yard signs on the basis of their subject matter, message, or content," with one exception: the association "may prohibit signs bearing commercial messages." The association "may establish reasonable, content-neutral sign regulations based on the number, placement, or size of the signs or on other objective factors." Because the provision opens with that "notwithstanding" clause, it supersedes a conflicting covenant.¹

The current text differs sharply from the version many compliance guides still quote. Before September 7, 2021, subsection (1)(c) spoke to "political signs" specifically. It defined a political sign as one carrying a message intended to influence an election, and, in the words of the Colorado General Assembly's own bill summary, "the statute allow[ed] political signs to be prohibited outright except during an election season, defined as the period from 45 days before an election to 7 days after the election." It capped size at the lesser of a local ordinance maximum or 36 inches by 48 inches, and it required at least one sign per contested office or ballot issue.⁵ House Bill 21-1310 swept that scheme away. The bill's enacted summary states that it "simplifies and broadens these protections, requiring an HOA to permit the display of any noncommercial flag or sign at any time, subject only to reasonable, content-neutral limitations such as the number, size, or placement of the flags or signs."²

So Colorado no longer defines "political sign" in this provision, and it no longer confines the protection to an election season. A candidate sign, a ballot-measure sign, and any other noncommercial sign all stand on equal footing: the association cannot ban them, and it cannot regulate them by message or viewpoint. It can regulate number, placement, and size through content-neutral rules.¹ The protection reaches condominium owners too, because the statute covers display "within the boundaries of the unit or in a window of the unit" — and the window language protects owners who have no private yard.¹ Flag display sits separately in subsection (1)(a) and follows its own content-neutral rule.¹

2B. The First Amendment and the source of the protection

The First Amendment limits government, not private parties. It restrains state actors, and a homeowners' association that governs a common interest community is a private entity created by contract, not a government body. That is why the First Amendment does not, on its own force, require a Colorado HOA to permit any sign.³

The protection Colorado owners enjoy is a statutory grant. Through CCIOA § 38-33.3-106.5, the legislature chose to bar associations from prohibiting signs and to void conflicting covenants.¹ A common misconception, one that surfaced during the 2021 legislative debate itself, holds that an HOA sign restriction violates a homeowner's First Amendment rights.³ As a legal matter it does not. The enforceable claim is the CCIOA claim, not a constitutional one.

Two recent U.S. Supreme Court sign-code decisions come up in this area, but neither constrains an HOA. Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015) and City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising (2022) address municipal sign codes and the content-neutrality limits the First Amendment places on governments. They govern what a city or town may do, not what a private association may do. The Colorado Constitution's free-speech clause (Art. II, § 10) is not the operative source of the HOA protection either; it constrains state action. CCIOA is the source, and CCIOA is the statute an owner or an association should read.

2C. How the statute interacts with CC&Rs, and its limits

The statute's own "notwithstanding" clause sets the order of precedence. A recorded covenant that prohibits signs, or that regulates them by message or content, is unenforceable to the extent it conflicts with § 38-33.3-106.5. CCIOA works as a floor that a declaration, bylaw, or rule cannot drop below.¹

The statute still hands the association meaningful authority. It may prohibit signs that bear commercial messages. It may adopt reasonable, content-neutral rules on the number, placement, or size of signs, or on other objective factors. And it defines the protected zone precisely: display within the boundaries of the unit or in a window of the unit.¹ What the statute does not protect is display outside that zone — on general common elements the association controls, for instance — and signs that violate a validly adopted, content-neutral size or number rule.¹

Content-neutrality is the operational trap. Even when it acts within its statutory authority, an association that enforces a facially neutral rule selectively, or that reaches a sign because of its message or viewpoint, invites a challenge, because the statute expressly forbids regulation "on the basis of their subject matter, message, or content."¹ The takeaway for Colorado is short: CCIOA is the floor, a conflicting CC&R cannot go below it, and the association's retained power runs only to commercial-message bans and genuinely content-neutral rules on number, placement, and size.

Section 3: Operational rules for Colorado associations

A. What an association may not do

An association may not prohibit the display of a sign by an owner or occupant within the unit boundaries or in a window, and it may not regulate such a sign on the basis of its subject matter, message, or content (C.R.S. § 38-33.3-106.5(1)(c)).¹ It may not enforce a covenant, bylaw, or rule that conflicts with that protection, because the statute overrides contrary governing documents (C.R.S. § 38-33.3-106.5(1)).¹ And it may not fine an owner for, or remove, a protected sign, because the same subsection forbids reaching a protected sign at all.¹

B. What an association may regulate

An association may prohibit signs that bear commercial messages (C.R.S. § 38-33.3-106.5(1)(c)).¹ It may adopt reasonable, content-neutral rules on the number, placement, or size of signs, or on other objective factors (C.R.S. § 38-33.3-106.5(1)(c)).¹ And it may address placement consistent with the statute's within-boundary and window scope, since the protection runs only to display within the unit boundaries or in a window (C.R.S. § 38-33.3-106.5(1)(c)).¹

C. Enforcement and fining constraints

Fining or removal that reaches a protected sign violates § 38-33.3-106.5(1)(c).¹ The general CCIOA enforcement limits apply as well. Under C.R.S. § 38-33.3-209.5, which HB22-1137 added in 2022, an association must give written notice and a cure period before it imposes a fine — two 30-day cure periods for a violation that does not threaten public health or safety, and a 72-hour period for a health-or-safety violation. As Faegre Drinker's analysis of the enacted bill put it, "for violations that do not threaten public safety or health that the unit owner does not cure within the 30 days, the fine for such violation may not exceed $500," and an association may not foreclose based solely on unpaid fines.⁶ The underlying fining power itself sits in C.R.S. § 38-33.3-302(1)(k), which permits fines only "after notice and an opportunity to be heard."⁷ HB24-1337 (2024) went further and capped the enforcement attorney fees an owner can be made to reimburse; per the Colorado General Assembly's enacted summary, "the act limits the reimbursement amount for attorney fees to $5,000 or 50% of the original money owed," adjusted for inflation.⁸ On the question of forum: enforcement litigation begins in Colorado District Court, or in County Court for smaller matters, and the DORA HOA Information and Resource Center accepts information requests and complaints but issues no binding decisions.⁹

D. Rule adoption and disclosure

Sign rules must conform to CCIOA and must be validly adopted. A rule that reaches further than § 38-33.3-106.5 — say, a message-based restriction or an election-window restriction — is unenforceable to the extent it conflicts with the statute (C.R.S. § 38-33.3-106.5(1)).¹

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

Neither of the recent measures below amended § 38-33.3-106.5. The last substantive change to the sign provision was HB21-1310 in 2021, which falls outside the 24-month window but remains the controlling change to the text.² What the legislature has been working on instead is collections, foreclosure, and the DORA resource center. Here are the two enacted bills that most affect how a sign-rule violation gets enforced.

A separate 2025 measure, SB25-184, continued the DORA HOA Information and Resource Center. Per its enacted summary, "the center was scheduled to repeal on September 1, 2025," and the act "continues the center until September 1, 2030."¹¹

B. Recent rulings

No qualifying case. A search of Colorado Court of Appeals and Colorado Supreme Court decisions from July 2023 forward turns up no published appellate opinion that interprets § 38-33.3-106.5 or adjudicates the enforcement of an HOA sign or flag display rule. The recent published CCIOA appellate decisions take up other subjects; Frisco Lot 3 LLC v. Giberson Limited Partnership, LLLP, 2024 COA 125 (Colo. App. Dec. 12, 2024), for example, addressed whether a pre-CCIOA subdivision created a common interest community, not sign rules.¹²

C. Active legislative debates

HB25-1123, which would have required informal negotiation and mediation before an owner or an association could sue, failed at the end of the 2025 session and did not become law. A comparable dispute-resolution proposal could return in a future session, and it would shape how any sign-rule dispute proceeds.¹³

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Colorado is a protective-statute state. Like California (Civil Code § 4710), Texas (Property Code §§ 202.009 and 202.0091), and Arizona (A.R.S. §§ 33-1808 and 33-1261), it bars an HOA from banning owner-displayed signs and overrides conflicting covenants.⁴ Colorado stands out in two respects. First, it places its sign protection inside a broader "prohibitions contrary to public policy" provision (C.R.S. § 38-33.3-106.5) that also covers flags, religious symbols, and other categories, and since 2021 it protects every noncommercial sign with no election-season window and no fixed size cap — a broader approach than the election-window statutes of Texas and Arizona.² Second, the legislature amends CCIOA often, including the 2022 and 2024 changes to the fining, cure-period, and collection framework that governs how any sign-rule violation gets enforced.⁶ For a multi-state operator, the practical point is direct: Colorado's statute overrides a conflicting CC&R, so a covenant ban that holds up in a covenant-primary state does not hold up here.¹

HOA Weekly's Colorado Political Signs coverage updates quarterly as the legislature and the Colorado courts act. Federal frameworks — the FHA, ADA, FDCPA, SCRA, and OTARD — apply to Colorado associations regardless of the state framework, but the federal First Amendment supplies no basis to challenge an HOA's sign rules, because an association is not a state actor.

1. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 38-33.3-106.5(1)(c) (Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act, current text as amended by H.B. 21-1310) (sign protection) ↩
2. H.B. 21-1310, HOA Regulation of Flags and Signs, 73d Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Colo. 2021) (enacted summary; effective Sept. 7, 2021) ↩
3. Colo. Div. of Real Estate, Political Signs and HOAs (H.B. 21-1310 signed July 2, 2021, effective Sept. 7, 2021; § 38-33.3-106.5 content-neutral standard) ↩
4. Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 33-1808 (Arizona); cf. Cal. Civ. Code § 4710 and Tex. Prop. Code § 202.009 (comparator protective-statute states) ↩
5. Colo. Gen. Assemb., H.B. 21-1310 Bill Analysis (describing repealed prior law: political signs prohibitable "except during an election season, defined as the period from 45 days before an election to 7 days after the election") ↩
6. H.B. 22-1137, HOA Board Accountability and Transparency, 73d Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Colo. 2022) (codified at Colo. Rev. Stat. § 38-33.3-209.5; cure periods, $500 fine cap, foreclosure limits) ↩
7. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 38-33.3-302(1)(k) (Powers of unit owners' association; fines permitted "after notice and an opportunity to be heard") ↩
8. H.B. 24-1337, Real Property Owner Unit Association Collections, 74th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Colo. 2024) (attorney-fee cap of $5,000 or 50%; 180-day redemption; effective Aug. 7, 2024) ↩
9. Colo. Div. of Real Estate, HOA Frequently Asked Questions and HOA Information and Resource Center ↩
10. H.B. 25-1043, Owner Equity Protection in Homeowners' Association Foreclosure Sales, 75th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Colo. 2025) (effective Oct. 1, 2025) ↩
11. S.B. 25-184, Sunset HOA Information and Resource Center, 75th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Colo. 2025) (center continued until Sept. 1, 2030) ↩
12. Frisco Lot 3 LLC v. Giberson Ltd. P'ship, LLLP, 2024 COA 125 (Colo. App. Div. VII Dec. 12, 2024) ↩
13. H.B. 25-1123, HOA Alternative Dispute Resolution, 75th Gen. Assemb., Reg. Sess. (Colo. 2025) (status: Lost; did not become law) ↩

Last verified: July 16, 2026.