Kansas stripped cities of fence authority and said in the statute that an HOA is not a city
Kansas stripped cities of fence authority and said in the statute that an HOA is not a city
2026-09-10 · Kansas · Legislation
Kansas passed a small law about electric fences that contains the clearest statement the Legislature has made in years about homeowners associations. House Bill 2603 forbids cities and counties from regulating battery-charged security fences. Then, in the definitions, it says who is not covered by that prohibition.1
The bill was vetoed by Governor Laura Kelly and enacted over her veto during the 2026 wrap-up session.
The definition
Section 1(b) reads: “‘Municipality’ means any county, township, city, district of whatever name or nature or any other political subdivision of this state, including any board, bureau, commission, committee or other agency, having power to regulate the use of private property or the installation or operation of electric or nonelectric security fencing or alarm systems on private property. ‘Municipality’ does not include a homeowners or similar private, nongovernmental association.”2
That final sentence was not necessary to make the bill work. A homeowners association is plainly not a county or a township, and no ordinary reading of the first sentence would have swept one in. The Legislature wrote it anyway.
What the prohibition actually does
Section 2(a) bars a municipality from adopting or enforcing any ordinance, resolution, code, standard or regulation that requires a permit or fee for a battery-charged security fence beyond what it requires for an alarm system; that imposes installation or operational requirements “inconsistent or conflict[ing] with or that are additional to” the statutory specification; or that “prohibits or imposes conditions upon the installation, operation, placement, servicing or maintenance” of such a fence.
The statutory specification in Section 1 is narrow. The fence must sit behind a perimeter barrier, be energized by a battery not exceeding 12 volts of direct current meeting IEC standard 60335-2-76, carry warning signage, and — critically for residential communities — “is located on property that is not designated by a municipality exclusively for residential use.”
How much of this reaches a Kansas community
Less than the headline suggests, and the reason is that residential-use limitation. A fence qualifying for the statute's protection cannot be on land a municipality designates exclusively for residential use. In a conventional Kansas subdivision, every lot is exactly that, so the preemption has no work to do there.
Where it does have work to do is the mixed-use planned development — a master association with commercially zoned outparcels, a self-storage or contractor's yard inside a PUD, an office condominium regime, or an association whose maintenance compound sits on a differently zoned parcel. In those communities a commercial tenant or unit owner can now install a battery-charged fence that the city is powerless to condition, and the only remaining gatekeeper is the declaration.
Why the excluded-definition sentence is worth more than the fence rule
Kansas gives associations very little express statutory recognition. The Kansas Uniform Common Interest Owners Bill of Rights Act reaches only common interest communities with twelve or more residential units, and outside it the source of association authority is the recorded declaration and the common law of covenants. Legislative statements about where that authority stands are rare.
Here the Legislature made two of them inside a single 2026 session. In SB 418 it wrote a covenant savings clause into the state's biggest housing law. In HB 2603 it wrote associations out of the definition of the entity being deregulated. Read together, the drafting pattern is consistent and deliberate: Kansas is narrowing the reach of public land-use authority and leaving private land-use authority alone.
What a board with commercial ground should do
Look at what the declaration says about fencing, not what the city says. If the answer is a general architectural approval requirement, that is now the operative control on this fence type for any qualifying parcel, and the association is the only body that can say no.
Check whether the design authority is anchored in the declaration. K.S.A. 58-4617(c) permits construction and design standards “if the declaration so provides,” and requires the association to adopt procedures for enforcement and approval, “including a reasonable time within which the association must act after an application is submitted and the consequences of its failure to act.”3 An association with no stated response deadline is exposed on a topic where the applicant now has no municipal hurdle to blame for delay.
Ask the insurer. An energized perimeter fence inside a community with common elements is a premises-liability question before it is an aesthetics question, and it belongs in front of the carrier before an approval issues.
What to watch next
Watch whether the exclusion language gets reused. A definitional carve-out that says an association is not a municipality is a portable drafting device, and Kansas preemption bills are becoming more common. If it starts appearing routinely, the Legislature will have built a consistent rule without ever passing a bill about associations.
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