Louisiana HOA Director Qualifications

Section 1: Overview

Start with what changed. Louisiana reworked its planned-community statute effective 2025, and the new version does two things the old one did not: it spells out the board’s powers, and it lets the owners remove officers and directors by majority vote. What it still does not do is screen candidates. Eligibility stays a documentary question — the statute sets no certification requirement, no term limit, and no automatic disqualification for owners who fall behind on their dues or for people with a criminal record.¹

Two statutes split the field. Planned communities — the non-condominium associations — answer to the Louisiana Planned Community Act, La. R.S. 9:1141.1 et seq., which Acts 2024, No. 158 rewrote. Condominiums answer to the separate Louisiana Condominium Act, La. R.S. 9:1121.101 et seq. The two do not overlap, because the statute defines a planned community to exclude any condominium property already governed by the Condominium Act.²

Remember that Louisiana is a civil-law state, so the vocabulary differs from what managers see elsewhere. A planned community is immovable property described in a declaration. A common area is immovable property. The private rules that govern the community are building restrictions. And when an owner falls behind, the association’s security for unpaid charges is a privilege on immovables, not a common-law lien.³

All of this places Louisiana in the moderate-touch group, well apart from a heavy-touch state like Florida, which imposes the director certification, term limits, and automatic disqualification screens that Louisiana does not.⁴ The sections below trace where director qualifications come from, then work through eligibility, disqualification, tenure, and onboarding one layer at a time.

Section 2: Where director qualifications come from

2A. The planned-community statute and the Condominium Act

Planned communities take their rules from the Louisiana Planned Community Act, La. R.S. 9:1141.1 et seq.⁵ The current version is recent. The Louisiana Law Institute spent several years drafting what became Acts 2024, No. 158 (Senate Bill 23 of the 2024 Regular Session), which replaced the old nine-section Homeowners Association Act with a fifty-section framework modeled on the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act. It took effect January 1, 2025 for newly formed communities.⁶ Condominiums follow a different statute, the Louisiana Condominium Act, La. R.S. 9:1121.101 et seq.⁷ The two regimes never overlap, because R.S. 9:1141.2 defines a planned community as immovable property described in a declaration and then carves out any condominium property the Condominium Act already governs.²

On the board itself, the reworked statute added or restated several provisions worth knowing. R.S. 9:1141.21 sets the powers and duties of the board and its officers, and it bars the board from amending the declaration, amending the bylaws, or terminating the planned community.⁸ R.S. 9:1141.39 lets the owners remove officers and directors by majority vote.⁹ R.S. 9:1141.25 lists what the bylaws must contain, including the rules that govern the board.¹⁰ And R.S. 9:1141.19 and 9:1141.20 organize the lot owners association as a nonprofit corporation and grant the association its powers — adopting bylaws, preparing a budget, contracting, collecting assessments, imposing fees and fines, and indemnifying the officers and the board.¹¹

Here is what neither statute does: it imposes no Florida-style eligibility screen. Neither the Planned Community Act nor the Condominium Act requires a director to earn a certification or take a course, none sets a term limit, and none automatically disqualifies an owner who owes money or a person who carries a felony conviction.¹

2B. The corporate-law layer: the Louisiana Nonprofit Corporation Law

Most Louisiana associations incorporate as nonprofits under the Louisiana Nonprofit Corporation Law, La. R.S. 12:201 et seq.¹² Think of that law as corporate scaffolding rather than an HOA statute. It governs how a corporation is structured and run, including the board of directors and how directors are removed. R.S. 12:224 supplies the baselines: a nonprofit’s affairs are managed by a board of at least three natural persons; directors serve one-year terms unless the articles or bylaws say otherwise; no director may be elected to a single term longer than five years; and the voting members may remove one or more directors at a special meeting called for that purpose by a majority in interest of all voting members.¹³ The same section gives five or more voting members a separate route — they may ask a court to remove a director for fraudulent or dishonest acts or gross abuse of authority.¹³ A few associations take a different corporate form, organizing under the Louisiana Business Corporation Act, La. R.S. 12:1-101 et seq., or as unincorporated associations, depending on what the declaration provides.¹⁴

Those corporate baselines now have to be squared with the statute’s new removal provision. R.S. 9:1141.39 gives planned communities a removal rule keyed to the lot owners and the association’s voting interest; R.S. 12:224 supplies the general nonprofit default keyed to voting members.⁹ When a planned community is organized as a nonprofit corporation, the planned-community statute controls as the special law, and the Nonprofit Corporation Law fills the gaps.⁶

2C. The declaration and bylaws as the source of eligibility screens

Even after the 2025 rework, the eligibility screens for candidates come mostly from the declaration and the bylaws. R.S. 9:1141.25 requires the bylaws to fix the number of board members and to spell out the qualifications, the terms of office, and the manner of electing and removing directors and officers.¹⁰ Precedence runs in a clear order: the controlling statute first — the Planned Community Act or the Condominium Act — then the declaration and bylaws, then the Nonprofit Corporation Law defaults, then any board-adopted rules.¹⁵ In practice, a manager applies the reworked statute’s board powers and removal rule, then reads the governing documents for the eligibility screens, keeping the civil-law terminology straight throughout.

Section 3: Director eligibility, disqualification, and tenure rules

A. Eligibility to serve

For planned communities, the statute sets exactly one eligibility floor. R.S. 9:1141.21(A) provides that the board must consist of at least three natural persons, each of whom is a lot owner — or, where a lot belongs to a juridical person, a representative of that owner (source layer: planned-community statute; applies to planned communities).⁸ That is a meaningful civil-law detail. When a corporation, limited liability company, or trust owns a lot, an individual who represents that owner fills the seat; an unconnected third party does not. Every other condition — residency, a minimum age, good standing — is documentary, drawn from the declaration and bylaws, which R.S. 9:1141.25 requires to address director qualifications (source layer: declaration and bylaws).¹⁰ The Condominium Act sets no comparable floor and leaves board composition and qualification to the bylaws (source layer: Condominium Act and bylaws; applies to condominiums).¹⁶ How the rules treat co-owners, spouses, usufructuaries, trustees, and entity representatives turns on how the governing documents define a lot owner or member, and on the representative concept R.S. 9:1141.21(A) uses for juridical-person owners.

B. Disqualification and removal

For planned communities, R.S. 9:1141.39 lets the lot owners remove officers and directors by majority vote, with or without cause, at a meeting where a quorum is present and notice of the removal went out.⁹ A majority vote has a statutory meaning here: R.S. 9:1141.2 defines it as more than fifty percent of the voting interest present at a duly called meeting of the association.¹⁷ One exception holds firm — the lot owners cannot remove a director the declarant appointed while the period of declarant control runs (source layer: planned-community statute; applies to planned communities).⁹ The mechanics of a recall — calling the meeting, giving notice, meeting quorum, and casting the vote — are a board-elections question, taken up separately; what matters for qualifications is the majority-vote threshold and the declarant-control carve-out. The Condominium Act carries no parallel removal provision and defers to the bylaws and, for nonprofit associations, to the Nonprofit Corporation Law (source layer: Condominium Act, bylaws, Nonprofit Corporation Law; applies to condominiums).¹⁶ Under that law, R.S. 12:224 lets the voting members remove directors at a special meeting by a majority in interest of all voting members, and it allows a court to remove a director for fraudulent or dishonest acts.¹³ For a planned community organized as a nonprofit corporation, the planned-community removal provision governs as the special law, with R.S. 12:224 supplying the corporate default and the judicial-removal route.

Whether delinquency or a criminal record disqualifies a candidate or a sitting director is, in Louisiana, a documentary question rather than a statutory bar. Neither statute strips a delinquent owner or a person with a felony record of eligibility; any such screen has to appear in the declaration or bylaws.¹ Conflict-of-interest limits run through R.S. 9:1141.21(B), which holds directors and officers to the conflict-of-interest rules and standard of care of the Nonprofit Corporation Law.⁸ And the board’s own powers have edges: under R.S. 9:1141.21(D), the board may not amend the declaration, amend the bylaws, terminate the planned community, elect directors, set the qualifications, powers, duties, or terms of office of directors, or adopt rules that conflict with the declaration.⁸

C. Board composition and terms

A planned-community board runs no smaller than three natural persons under R.S. 9:1141.21(A), and only drops below that if the community itself has fewer than three lots (source layer: planned-community statute).⁸ Everything above that floor — the maximum number of directors, the length of a term, staggering, and any term cap — is documentary, set by the bylaws under R.S. 9:1141.25, which must address both the number of board members and the directors’ terms of office (source layer: declaration and bylaws).¹⁰ Louisiana sets no statutory term limit on planned-community or condominium directors. The Nonprofit Corporation Law does supply a one-year default term and caps any single term at five years for incorporated associations, but that is a corporate default, not an HOA term limit, and the governing documents may say otherwise.¹³ Declarant control and the transition to owner control run through R.S. 9:1141.22: the declaration may provide a period during which the declarant appoints and removes officers and directors, but that period ends at the outer limits the statute fixes — for example, 120 days after 75 percent of the lots are transferred to unrelated purchasers where no add-on rights were reserved — after which the lot owners elect the board.¹⁸

D. Onboarding and ongoing qualification duties

Louisiana asks nothing of a new director before service — no certification, no education course, no signed eligibility affidavit.¹ Florida runs the other way, and the contrast is sharp. There, a residential-condominium director must, within 90 days of being elected or appointed, certify in writing to the association secretary that the director has read the declaration, the articles, the bylaws, and the current written policies, will work to uphold them, and will faithfully discharge the fiduciary duty — or, instead, complete a department-approved course. Florida also caps board service at eight consecutive years unless two-thirds of the owners vote otherwise, and it requires removal of a director charged with certain offenses.⁴ Louisiana has no equivalent onboarding screen for either planned communities or condominiums. Once seated, a planned-community board works within the powers and duties of R.S. 9:1141.21 and the association powers of R.S. 9:1141.20, including the duty to propose a budget.⁸ Indemnification of the officers and the board flows through R.S. 9:1141.19 and 9:1141.20 for planned communities, and through the unit owners association’s powers for condominiums.¹¹ The fiduciary baseline sits in R.S. 9:1141.21(B), which requires directors and officers to exercise the care and loyalty the Nonprofit Corporation Law demands and limits money-damages liability except as R.S. 9:2792.7 or other law provides.⁸ Conflict-of-interest disclosure flows from that same Nonprofit Corporation Law standard.

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

The one development that matters here is the 2025 rework itself.

No other enactment in the past twenty-four months touched director qualifications, board composition, or director removal under either statute beyond Act 158. Louisiana’s HOA-related bills in the 2025 Regular Session dealt with other subjects — Act 224 (HB 56), for instance, addressed the display of the United States flag in planned communities and condominiums, not director eligibility or removal.²⁰

B. Recent appellate rulings

No qualifying decision from the Louisiana Court of Appeal or the Louisiana Supreme Court in the past thirty-six months squarely addresses planned-community or condominium director eligibility, director removal, board composition, or the director standard of care. The recent appellate work on condominiums and HOAs runs to assessments, privileges, insurance, and the force of law of declarations and bylaws — not director governance.²¹ No qualifying activity in the period.

C. Active legislative debates

No active proposal that would further change director qualifications, board composition, or removal under either statute was identified as of the date of this page.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Louisiana is a moderate-touch, civil-law state for director qualifications. The planned-community statute it reworked in 2025 now supplies the board’s powers, a three-director lot-owner composition floor, and a statutory removal of officers and directors by majority vote — but it still leaves the candidate eligibility screens, residency, age, good standing, and term limits to the declaration and bylaws.⁸ That puts Louisiana between a heavy-touch state like Florida, which piles statutory certification or education, an eight-year consecutive-service cap, and removal of directors charged with certain offenses onto board service, and a light-touch state like Iowa, where eligibility is almost entirely documentary.⁴ For a multi-state operator, two things reset the backdrop here: the civil-law vocabulary — immovable property, building restrictions, and privileges in place of common-law terms — and the 2025 rework, which now grounds removal of officers and directors in a statutory majority vote rather than the governing documents alone. Louisiana still imposes no director certification requirement and no statutory term limit.

HOA Weekly refreshes its Louisiana director-qualifications coverage each quarter, as the Legislature and the Louisiana courts act. Federal frameworks rarely dictate director qualifications, but Louisiana associations still answer to federal law — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the OTARD rule — in their broader operations.

Footnotes

1. La. R.S. 9:1141.21 and 9:1141.25 (Louisiana Planned Community Act; three-director, lot-owner board floor; qualifications and terms left to the bylaws; no certification, term limit, or delinquency or felony disqualification) ↩
2. La. R.S. 9:1141.2 (Definitions) (“‘Planned community’ means immovable property described in a declaration ... A planned community shall not include condominium property subject to the Louisiana Condominium Act.”) ↩
3. La. R.S. 9:1141.2 (immovable property and common area definitions); La. R.S. 9:1145 (privileges on immovables for association charges) ↩
4. Fla. Stat. § 720.3033 (HOA director certification and education; removal of directors charged with specified offenses); Fla. Stat. § 718.112(2)(d) (condominium director written certification within 90 days; eight-consecutive-year service cap subject to a two-thirds owner override) ↩
5. La. R.S. 9:1141.1 (short title, “Louisiana Planned Community Act”) ↩
6. Steeg Law, “Planned Community Act: What Homeowners Associations Need to Know” (Louisiana Law Institute rewrite; Act No. 158, 2024 Regular Session; effective Jan. 1, 2025; modeled on the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act; Nonprofit Corporation Law fills gaps) ↩
7. La. R.S. 9:1121.101 (short title, “Louisiana Condominium Act”) ↩
8. La. R.S. 9:1141.21 (Board of directors and officers; at least three natural persons who are lot owners or representatives of juridical-person lot owners; standard of care and conflict-of-interest rules under the Nonprofit Corporation Law; board prohibitions; duty to propose a budget) ↩
9. La. R.S. 9:1141.39 (Removal of directors and officers by majority vote, with or without cause, at a noticed meeting with a quorum; declarant-appointed directors not removable during declarant control), via Justia (Acts 2024, No. 158) ↩
10. La. R.S. 9:1141.25 (Bylaws; must state the number of board members and the qualifications, terms of office, and manner of electing and removing directors and officers), via Justia (Acts 2024, No. 158) ↩
11. La. R.S. 9:1141.19 and 9:1141.20 (organization of the lot owners association as a nonprofit corporation; association powers and duties, including adopting bylaws, preparing a budget, contracting, assessments, fees and fines, and indemnifying officers and the board), legislative digest ↩
12. La. R.S. 12:201 et seq. (Louisiana Nonprofit Corporation Law), via Justia (Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 12, Chapter 2) ↩
13. La. R.S. 12:224 (Board of directors; not less than three natural persons; one-year default term; no single term longer than five years; removal by a majority in interest of all voting members at a special meeting; judicial removal on suit of five or more voting members for fraudulent or dishonest acts or gross abuse of authority) ↩
14. Homeowners Protection Bureau, “Louisiana HOA Laws” (associations organized as a nonprofit corporation, unincorporated association, or other legal entity per La. R.S. 9:1141.2; Louisiana Business Corporation Act, La. R.S. 12:1-101 et seq.) ↩
15. Roussel, “The Planned Community Act,” Louisiana Bar Journal, Vol. 73, No. 1 (June/July 2025) (community documents govern; the Planned Community Act’s default rules apply where the documents are silent) ↩
16. La. R.S. 9:1123.101 (Organization of unit owners’ association; membership consists of all unit owners; no statutory director-eligibility or removal provision); administration governed by the bylaws under La. R.S. 9:1123.106 ↩
17. La. R.S. 9:1141.2(21) (“‘Majority vote’ means the vote cast through a method permitted by R.S. 9:1141.28 by more than fifty percent of the voting interest present at a duly called meeting of the association.”) ↩
18. La. R.S. 9:1141.22 (Declarant control; the declaration may provide a period during which the declarant appoints and removes officers and directors, terminating at the statutory outer limits, e.g., 120 days after 75 percent of the lots are transferred to unrelated purchasers where no add-on rights were reserved), referenced in La. R.S. 9:1141.24, via Justia (Acts 2024, No. 158) ↩
19. Acts 2024, No. 158 (Enrolled Senate Bill No. 23, 2024 Regular Session), official enrolled text ↩
20. Steeg Law, “2025 Louisiana Legislative Update” (Act 224, HB 56: display of the United States flag in planned communities and condominiums) ↩
21. Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal decisions, 2024 (recent condominium and HOA appellate decisions address assessments, injunctions, and the force of law of declarations and bylaws, not director eligibility, removal, composition, or standard of care), via Justia ↩