Maryland strips governing documents of the power to stop a board installing EV chargers
Maryland strips governing documents of the power to stop a board installing EV chargers
2026-09-12 · Maryland · Legislation
What happened. On 1 October 2026 — nineteen days from now — a clause in a Maryland condominium declaration or HOA covenant that blocks the board from installing electric-vehicle charging equipment in common parking stops being enforceable. House Bill 405 was approved by the Governor on 26 May 2026 as Chapter 753 of the Acts of 2026, adding Real Property § 11-111.6 for condominiums and § 11B-111.13 for homeowners associations.1
And it reaches backwards. The legislature's own synopsis ends with the phrase “applying the Act retroactively” — so a restriction recorded decades ago is caught along with one adopted last year.1
The gap this closes
Maryland has protected the individual owner since 2021. Senate Bill 144, effective 1 October of that year, voided governing-document provisions that effectively prohibited an owner from charging in a deeded or designated space, working through §§ 11-111.4 and 11B-111.8.
What that left untouched was the association acting for everybody. A board that wanted to put two chargers in the visitor lot — the only realistic option in a building where nobody has a deeded space — could still be stopped by its own declaration. Chapter 753 is aimed squarely at that, and the distinction is worth holding onto: § 11-111.4 protects the owner's space; § 11-111.6 protects the board's project.
What the statute actually says
Read the synopsis carefully, because the operative standard is narrower than “associations must install chargers”:
“Prohibiting provisions of the governing documents of a condominium or homeowners association from unreasonably restricting the governing body from installing or authorizing the installation of electric vehicle recharging equipment; establishing that the installation or authorization of electric vehicle recharging equipment by a governing body is subject to certain budget processes of the condominium or homeowners association for a common area renovation or alteration similar in cost or magnitude…”1
Two things follow. The test is unreasonable restriction, not any restriction. And the project runs through the association's ordinary budget machinery for a common-area job of comparable size — which is a shield as much as a duty, because it means no special supermajority or separate owner referendum can be imposed on charging equipment specifically.
The margins tell you this was contested
HB 405 was not one of the session's consensus bills. Delegate Terrasa's measure passed the House 94–28 on 21 March 2026 and the Senate 32–11 on 13 April — sine die day, with hours to spare.1
Compare that with the session's other community-association laws: the sign bill went 128–0 and 45–0, the insurance bill 41–0 and 134–2. Thirty-nine members voted against EV charging authority. The retroactivity clause is the likeliest reason — a statute that overrides recorded covenants adopted before anyone contemplated the question attracts a different kind of objection than a prospective rule does.
What a board has to do differently
Nothing, unless it wants to. This is an enabling statute, not a mandate: it removes an obstacle rather than creating an obligation. No Maryland association is required to install a charger.
For a board that does want to proceed after 1 October, the practical sequence is the ordinary one:
- Price the job and put it in the budget the way any comparable common-area alteration would go in. That is the statutory route, and using it is what makes the restriction unenforceable.
- Do not seek the special approval your documents demand for this specifically. A declaration clause requiring, say, 75 percent owner consent for charging equipment while a similar-cost roof or lighting project needs only a board vote is the paradigm case of what § 11-111.6 is aimed at.
- Expect conditions to be permissible. Practitioners reading the enacted text report that an association may still require a parking-capacity assessment and a revocable licence for use of the common element.2 “Unreasonably restricting” leaves room for reasonable administration.
The unresolved question is where reasonable stops. The statute supplies no numeric test — no cost percentage, no capacity threshold — unlike the solar amendment the legislature passed a year earlier, which put hard 5 percent and 10 percent figures into § 2-119. Charging gets a standard; solar got arithmetic. That difference will be litigated before it is legislated.
Where it sits in a busy two years
Maryland has now touched association-level vehicle charging three times. SB 144 in 2021 created the owner's right. HB 159 and SB 465 in 2024 (Chapters 268 and 269) amended the surrounding framework. Chapter 753 adds the board's side. For anyone maintaining a Maryland compliance calendar, § 11-111.6 and § 11B-111.13 are new section numbers, not amendments to existing ones, and they will not appear in a code volume printed before this autumn.
What to watch next
The legislature is, by its own record, finished with this subject for the moment: no further bill amending § 11-111.4 or § 11B-111.8 was alive at the close of the 2026 session, and nothing is filed for 2027 — Maryland's pre-file drafting deadline is 20 November 2026, so the first 2027 bill numbers will not exist until late this year.
The realistic sources of change are elsewhere. One is a dispute over what “similar in cost or magnitude” means when an association argues a charging installation is not comparable to anything in its budget history. The other is electrical capacity: a statute cannot conjure amperage into a 1970s garage, and the cost of a service upgrade is exactly the kind of figure that turns a reasonable restriction argument into a real one.
Related Maryland HOA Topics
- House Bill 405, Maryland General Assembly 2026 Regular Session — bill record and synopsis, Chapter 753, approved 26 May 2026, effective 1 October 2026 (Real Property §§ 11-111.6, 11B-111.13) ↩
- Maryland REALTORS, Summary of 2026 Real Estate Legislation (parking-capacity assessment and revocable licence as permitted conditions; recorded position: Support) ↩
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