New York bill on religious items at the door passed 141–0 and names HOAs, condos and co-ops
New York bill on religious items at the door passed 141–0 and names HOAs, condos and co-ops
2026-09-15 · New York · Legislation · Pending — not yet law
A bill that would make it unlawful for a New York condominium board, cooperative corporation or homeowners association to prohibit a religious item on a resident's entry door or doorframe has passed both houses almost unanimously. A9195-A cleared the Assembly 141–0 on May 11, 2026 and the Senate 60–1 on June 3, 2026. It has not been delivered to the Governor and it is not law.1
Two features make it unusual. It sits in the Civil Rights Law, not the Condominium Act — so it would be litigated alongside existing fair-housing and religious-accommodation theories rather than as a governing-documents dispute. And it names all three association forms expressly, in a single defined term.
“Controlling entity” is the operative definition
New Civil Rights Law § 79-r would define the term this way:
“'Controlling entity' means a cooperative housing corporation, condominium board, homeowners' association, managing agent, landlord, or any other person or entity authorized to adopt or enforce rules, covenants, bylaws, lease terms, proprietary lease terms, or other restrictions affecting a dwelling or residential premises.”2
“Dwelling” is defined to include “a rental dwelling unit, a condominium unit, and a dwelling unit occupied by a shareholder or proprietary lessee in a cooperative housing corporation.” A “religious item” is simply “an item displayed because of sincerely held religious belief.”
The prohibition, and the four exceptions
Subdivision 1 provides that a property owner or controlling entity “shall not enforce or adopt a restrictive covenant or any other restriction that prohibits one or more religious items from being displayed or affixed on the owner's or resident's entry or entry doorframe of their dwelling.”
Subdivision 2 preserves exactly four grounds. A restriction may still be enforced against a display that “(a) threatens the public health or safety; (b) violates any federal, state, local law, code, rule or regulation; (c) contains graphics, language or any display that is obscene or otherwise illegal; or (d) is an unreasonable or obtrusive size.”
Aesthetic uniformity is not on that list.
A drafting trap: the size cap is gone
The bill was amended on April 29, 2026, and the amendment materially rewrote it. The original A9195 carried a hard numeric cap — a total display size no greater than “thirty-six by twelve square inches” — and a separate association-specific subdivision borrowing California's “separate interest” vocabulary. The version that passed dropped both. In their place it puts the open-ended “unreasonable or obtrusive size” and folds associations into the “controlling entity” definition above.
Anyone reporting a 36-by-12-inch limit is describing a superseded draft. There is no numeric limit in the enacted text.
A second discrepancy is worth knowing because it cuts the other way. The sponsor's memorandum describes an exception to “prevent obstruction of door operation,” and the original bill did contain a clause on hindering the opening or closing of a door. The passed text of A9195-A does not contain it. The bill text controls, and it contains no door-operation exception.
Capital work gets a new procedural step
Subdivision 3 is the provision project managers will meet first:
“If an owner or controlling entity is performing maintenance, repair, replacement, or other work affecting the location of a religious display protected by this section, the resident may be required to temporarily remove or relocate such display for the duration of such work. Upon completion of the work if the religious item was removed, the resident shall be able to restore the display. Reasonable notice shall be provided where practicable.”
Three duties fall out of that sentence: the board may require temporary removal; it must let the resident restore the item afterwards; and reasonable notice is required where practicable. Door-replacement and hallway-renovation scopes would need that notice built into the schedule, not improvised when a resident objects.
What binds a board, and when
The runway is the shortest of any association bill this session: “This act shall take effect on the thirtieth day after it shall have become a law.”
Find the blanket rules first. A house rule that nothing may be affixed to doors or doorframes, or a corridor-uniformity policy stated in aesthetic terms, would be unenforceable as applied to religious items. Those rules are common in architectural and design standards and in proprietary leases.
Adopt a written size standard before the law takes effect, not after the first complaint. “Unreasonable or obtrusive size” is now the entire fight. A board that has a pre-existing, neutral, written dimensional standard is in a materially better position than one improvising per dispute, because it can point to a rule that was not adopted in response to any particular resident's faith.
Keep the four grounds, and only the four grounds, in the denial letter. Our New York religious displays page covers the existing framework the bill would sit on top of, and our fining authority page covers the enforcement side — which matters here because a fine levied on a protected display would be an enforcement of a void restriction.
Why the Civil Rights Law placement matters
The sponsor's memorandum states the purpose plainly and identifies the practice at issue: “According to the Jewish faith, a mezuzah must be placed on the entrances of a Jewish residence (Deuteronomy 6:9 and Deuteronomy 11:20).” It notes that “California, Connecticut, Florida, Rhode Island, Illinois and Texas have similar laws in place.”3
Mezuzah disputes in New York co-ops already have a litigation history under fair-housing and human-rights theories. The practical effect of putting the rule in the Civil Rights Law is to give those claims a direct statutory hook, rather than requiring a plaintiff to work through a reasonable-accommodation analysis.
What to watch
The bill's Senate companion, S4466-A, shows how fragile this has been: it passed the Senate on April 9, 2025, then “died in assembly” on January 7, 2026, was amended and recommitted on April 30, 2026, and was ultimately substituted by the Assembly bill. Near-unanimity in both houses is a strong signal, but the only event that matters now is delivery to the Governor.
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