The lopsided record, and the one voice against

At the February 27, 2025 Judiciary hearing, Chair Bosn read the written comment tally into the record: “there were 91 proponent comments submitted, 3 opponent comments, and 1 neutral comment.”³ Dungan told the committee that “[s]ince introducing this legislation in 2023, our office has received numerous calls from all over Nebraska on this specific issue.” The Sierra Club's Nebraska chapter testified in support.

Exactly one person testified against it: Korby Gilbertson, registered lobbyist for the Nebraska Realtors Association, the State Home Builders, and the Lincoln and Omaha Builders Associations. Her argument was the contract argument, and it is the one that has now prevailed four times:

“when you build or buy into a neighborhood that has an HOA, you get that document, you sign that document, and you know what the rules are for your neighborhood. That is a contractual agreement that you sign… At a minimum, it should only be forward looking, not affect existing HOA agreements.”³

The retroactivity point in that last sentence is the specific vulnerability in LB 137's drafting. Subsection (3) reached covenants already recorded, and no version of the bill has ever been narrowed to apply prospectively only.

The four-session pattern

This is not a bill that lost a close vote. It is a bill that has never had a vote taken on it:

• LB 49 (2023, Dungan) — solar and wind energy instruments void and unenforceable, plus a civil cause of action. Judiciary. Indefinitely postponed April 18, 2024.⁴
• LB 1119 (2024, Dungan) — restrictions on HOA regulation of solar and wind energy devices. Judiciary. Indefinitely postponed April 18, 2024.⁵
• LB 137 (2025–26, Dungan) — hearing held February 27, 2025; carried over January 7, 2026 as one of 88 bills still held in Judiciary; indefinitely postponed April 17, 2026. No committee statement exists, because no vote was ever taken.

The Community Associations Institute recorded LB 137 in its 2026 Nebraska report as a bill it opposed and which “Successfully DIED in Committee.”⁶

Where that leaves a Nebraska owner

The declaration controls, and there is no statutory override. Nebraska has no solar-access statute limiting what a recorded covenant may prohibit. An association's architectural authority over a rooftop array comes from the declaration and is constrained by the declaration — by its approval standards, its stated response deadlines, and the ordinary covenant defences of waiver and selective enforcement.

Distinguish the utility question from the covenant question. Interconnection and net metering decide whether a utility will connect and credit a system. They do not decide whether an owner may install one. Owners routinely conflate the two and arrive at a board meeting with the wrong document.

Sales pressure is a live regulatory problem even where installation is not. On September 3, 2026 the Attorney General settled with a residential solar seller over door-to-door practices that included ignoring no-solicitation signs. Covenant enforcement and solicitation control are association functions; the state's consumer-protection interest sits beside them, not on top of them.

What to watch next

Watch whether a fifth attempt is narrowed. Every version so far has voided existing covenants, and that is the single feature the opposition has named at every hearing. A prospective-only bill, or one keyed to a reasonable-restriction standard rather than a flat prohibition on restriction, would be a materially different proposal. The biennium reset means whoever introduces it in 2027 starts from a blank sheet either way.