Texas confirms solar roof tiles count as protected solar energy devices
Texas confirms solar roof tiles count as protected solar energy devices
2026-09-19 · Texas · Legislation
What happened. House Bill 431, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, took effect immediately on 29 May 2025 — it carried the two-thirds vote required for immediate effect under Article III, Section 39 of the Texas Constitution.2 The amendment itself is one clause.
The amendment
Property Code Section 202.010(a)(2) defines the term that governs which installations a Texas association may not broadly prohibit. As amended it reads:
“‘Solar energy device’ has the meaning assigned by Section 171.107, Tax Code. The term includes a solar roof tile.”1
The second sentence is what HB 431 added.
The clarifying-intent section
Section 2 of the act is unusual and worth reading alongside the amendment: “The amendment by this Act of Section 202.010(a)(2), Property Code, is intended to clarify rather than change existing law.”
A legislature saying this is saying that solar roof tiles were already within the definition and that the express mention resolves an argument rather than creating a new right.
Why the clarification mattered
Section 202.010 borrows its definition from Tax Code Section 171.107, a franchise-tax provision written around devices that collect, store or distribute solar energy. A conventional rack-mounted panel is plainly such a device. A solar roof tile is a roofing product and an energy device at once, which is what gave rise to the argument that it fell outside the borrowed definition and could therefore be treated as an ordinary roofing-material question under an association's architectural standards.
The added sentence closes that argument. The clarifying-intent section in Section 2 goes further, because a clarification of existing law speaks to installations that predate 29 May 2025 in a way a prospective change would not.
What Section 202.010 still permits
The amendment enlarges the class of protected devices. It does not disturb the regulatory latitude Section 202.010 leaves to associations, which remains substantial: the section's existing conditions on placement, on approval processes, and on the circumstances in which an association may decline an installation are untouched by HB 431. Solar roof tiles now enter that framework as solar energy devices; they do not enter it exempt from it.
The practical difference is which question gets asked. An association evaluating a solar roof tile installation is on Section 202.010's ground, with its specific conditions and its specific limits, rather than on the open ground of general architectural review.
The immediate-effect detail
Most 2025 Texas association legislation took effect 1 September 2025. HB 431 did not. Its Section 3 provided for immediate effect on a two-thirds vote of each house, with 1 September 2025 as the fallback, and the Legislature's own record shows the last action as “Effective immediately” on 29 May 2025.2 For a statute whose companion section says it clarifies existing law, the three-month head start is a small point, but it is the operative date.
How it is codified
The act is Acts 2025, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, Chapter 254. The official source note to Section 202.010 records it as “Acts 2025, 89th Leg., R.S., Ch. 254 (H.B. 431), Sec. 1, eff. May 29, 2025,” following the section's original addition in 2011 by House Bill 362 and two 2015 amendments.3
The authors, and what it signals
The bill was authored by Representatives Cortez, Eddie Morales and Plesa. A narrow definitional clarification passing with an immediate-effect vote, and carrying an express statement that it changes nothing, is the shape of a fix to a recurring dispute rather than a policy shift. It is the least contested kind of association legislation Texas produced in 2025.
What to watch next
The borrowed definition remains the structural feature to watch. Because Section 202.010(a)(2) takes its meaning from Tax Code Section 171.107, an amendment to that franchise-tax provision would move the boundary of what Texas associations may not prohibit, without the Property Code being amended at all. HB 431 added a specific inclusion on top of that borrowed definition; it did not replace it.
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