The clothesline bill has waited sixteen months
The clothesline bill has waited sixteen months
2026-09-15 · Pennsylvania · Legislation · Pending — not yet law
What would happen. HB 67 would stop a Pennsylvania condominium, cooperative or planned-community association from unreasonably prohibiting an owner from drying laundry outdoors. It is not law. It passed the House on 13 May 2025 by 128-75 and was referred to the Senate Urban Affairs and Housing Committee on 22 May 2025, where it has had no action in the sixteen months since.1
What the bill says
HB 67, sponsored by Rep. Lisa Borowski, would add three parallel sections — 68 Pa.C.S. §§ 3323 for condominiums, 4324 for cooperatives and 5323 for planned communities. The operative language is:
"Except as provided in the declaration, an association shall be prohibited from imposing any unreasonable restriction that prohibits a person who occupies a unit from outdoor solar access for drying clothes within the boundaries of a unit or the limited common elements assigned to the unit."2
The limits built into it
Three, and they are substantial enough that this is a narrower bill than its nickname suggests.
First, the opening words: "Except as provided in the declaration." A declaration that addresses the subject appears to survive — which is a very different thing from the solar-access model, where the statute would override the declaration outright.
Second, the geography. The right reaches "within the boundaries of a unit or the limited common elements assigned to the unit." It does not reach general common elements. An owner in a building with no assigned limited common element has nowhere the section applies.
Third, drying must be "out of view from the front entrances or public areas of the association," and associations may adopt time, place and manner rules and may prohibit it where it "poses a safety or fire hazard, impedes proper evacuation in the case of an emergency or obstructs the view from, or access to, other units."2
What the vote tells you
128-75 is a comfortable margin and a real split. The bill is not controversial in the House and it is not consensus either. What it plainly is, on the evidence of sixteen months of Senate inaction, is not a priority.
That pattern is the important thing here, and it is not specific to clotheslines. Two association bills have now passed the Pennsylvania House in this session — this one and the solar-access bill, HB 1239, which passed 109-93 on 1 July 2026 — and both went to the same Senate committee, Urban Affairs and Housing, and neither has been reported out. A third, HB 1250 on manufactured-home communities, passed the House 144-59 in June 2025 and has been in that committee for fifteen months.
The committee is not inactive. It reported SB 746 as amended on 8 June 2026 and SB 1299 on the same day. It is making choices, and House-passed association bills are not what it is choosing.
The predecessor, and how it died
This is a reintroduction. HB 1179 in the 2023-2024 session was the same idea from the same sponsor. It got further into the committee process than most — an amendment was adopted 14-11 and the bill was reported as amended 14-11 on 21 May 2024 — and then it was laid on the table on the day of first consideration and never came off.3 It died at sine die on 30 November 2024.
A companion, SB 1164, was referred to Senate Urban Affairs and Housing on 1 May 2024 and had no action at all.
What governs today, and it is the declaration
Nothing has changed. A Pennsylvania association's restriction on outdoor drying is enforceable on the terms of its own governing documents. There is no statutory right of any kind, and Title 68 was not amended at all in this session.
For a board, the operational question is not whether this bill passes — on the current record it very likely will not before 30 November — but whether the association's own restriction is one it would want to defend. Blanket prohibitions written into 1990s rulebooks tend to be enforced unevenly, and uneven enforcement is where associations get into difficulty regardless of what the statute says. A rule that permits drying in an assigned rear area, out of view from the street, screened, during daylight hours, is the shape that both the bill and most disputes converge on. An association can adopt that now without waiting for anyone.
What to watch, and the date that decides it
The 2025-2026 session ends on 30 November 2026 and Pennsylvania has no carryover between sessions — the term of the Representatives elected in November 2024 began 1 December 2024 and expires then.4 Every bill not enacted by that date dies and must start over with a new number in 2027-2028.
The House reconvenes 28 September 2026. For HB 67 to become law, the Senate Urban Affairs and Housing Committee would have to report it, the full Senate would have to pass it on three considerations, and the Governor would have to sign it, all inside roughly two months of session days. That is possible and it is not what the last sixteen months predict.
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