August 2026: what was upheld

Bodin v. New Orleans City, No. 25-30524, decided August 5, 2026 (James E. Graves, Jr., J.; before Wiener, Haynes and Graves, JJ.), on appeal from a pleadings-stage dismissal in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

“One limits short-term rental licenses to one property per block,” … “and the other directly regulates short-term rental platforms to prevent them from processing transactions on unlicensed rentals. We uphold both.”

“For these reasons, we AFFIRM the district court's dismissal of the Hosts' Takings Clause claim and Airbnb's § 230 claim.”

So the density cap and the platform-side verification requirement stand, against both a Takings Clause challenge by hosts and a Communications Decency Act § 230 challenge by the platform. Whether rehearing or certiorari has been sought is not established.²

The state-law holding that reaches every Louisiana local regime

Before getting to the constitutional questions, Hignell-Stark settled the authority question:

“First, the City has the authority under state law to regulate STRs. In Louisiana, municipalities may regulate and restrict 'the location and use of the buildings, structures, and land for trade, industry, residence, or other purposes.' La. Revised Stat. § 33:4721. … 'It is well settled that the City has the authority to initiate legislation and enforce zoning ordinances' for short-term rentals. Chaumont v. City of New Orleans, 302 So.3d 39, 53 (La. App. 4th Cir. 2020). The City may regulate STRs under state law.”

R.S. 33:4721 is the source of every Louisiana local short-term rental scheme, and it constrains local governments, not associations.

The boundary, stated plainly

Neither case says anything about whether an association may restrict short-term rentals by covenant. They are municipal permitting cases. A Louisiana association's authority comes from its recorded declaration, from Civil Code articles 775 through 783, and since January 2026 from the Planned Community Act.

Two consequences follow for a board anyway.

An entity-owned unit is no longer per se unpermittable. After Hignell-Stark, an LLC can hold a New Orleans owner or operator permit. A board that has been treating entity ownership as evidence that a rental must be unlawful has lost that inference.

The density cap is not your rule. One licence per block is a city allocation. An association whose declaration prohibits rentals under thirty days is not made better off by the cap and not made worse off by it.

The city-side lever an association does have

Every New Orleans short-term rental owner's permit application, residential and commercial, requires the owner to certify:

“The Dwelling Unit is not subject to any contractual restrictions precluding the Dwelling Unit from being used for Short-Term Rentals, including but not limited to: homeowner association agreements, condominium bylaws, restrictive covenants, or building restrictions;”

And the same form records the consequence of a false certification:

“I understand that the City of New Orleans is authorized to suspend or revoke a permit or license issued under the provisions of its Municipal Code wherever a permit or license is issued in error or on the basis of incorrect, inaccurate, or any false statement or misrepresentation…”

So where an association's recorded documents prohibit the use, the association can contradict the certification with the recorded documents — a complaint to Safety and Permits, in addition to and never instead of enforcing the covenant. Keep the two tracks distinct: the city can revoke a permit; only the association can enforce its declaration, and only the declaration supports a fine.

We could not open New Orleans City Code Chapter 26 to pin the code section that imposes the certification requirement, so cite the City's own application form rather than a section number. The residential application also requires that the unit “is located on the same lot of record as the Owner's primary residence, and the Owner possesses a valid Homestead Exemption at this property,” and that “[t]he Owner possesses insurance that meets the requirements of City Code Sec. 26-618(A)(1).”³

What a board can do

• Enforce the covenant first. It is the only route that produces an injunction against the use, and Louisiana's Second Circuit granted one on a residential-purposes clause in 2025.
• Use the certification as a second track, not a substitute. Send the recorded declaration, not a summary.
• Stop treating an LLC as a red flag. The entity ban is gone.
• Do not tell owners what the city rules are. The scheme has been remanded once and is expected to change again.

What to watch next

Hignell-Stark was remanded to the Eastern District, so New Orleans's ordinance will move again. And a separate federal challenge to Lafayette's short-term rental ban in single-family zones — DeSelle v. Lafayette City-Parish Consolidated Government, No. 6:25-cv-00835 (W.D. La.), filed June 16, 2025 — is reported to have been dismissed in March 2026, but we could not open the order and do not publish the disposition.