Texas HOAs can no longer bar candidates and officials from common-area meetings
Texas HOAs can no longer bar candidates and officials from common-area meetings
2026-09-19 · Texas · Legislation
What happened. House Bill 621, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, added Property Code Section 202.013, effective 1 September 2025. It takes a specific category of restriction out of a Texas association's dedicatory instruments.1
The prohibition
Subsection (b) provides that, except as otherwise provided by the section, a property owners' association:
“may not adopt or enforce a provision in a dedicatory instrument that prohibits or has the effect of prohibiting a property owner or resident from inviting governmental officials and candidates who have been qualified in the appropriate election to run for public governmental office to address or meet with property owners' association members, residents, or their invitees in common areas of the association.”
Two phrases set the reach. “Adopt or enforce” covers both a new rule and an existing one. “Or has the effect of prohibiting” means a facially neutral provision that operates as a ban is caught along with an explicit one.
Who qualifies
The section names “governmental officials” and “candidates who have been qualified in the appropriate election to run for public governmental office.” The qualification requirement is doing real work: an announced but unqualified candidate is outside the protected class as the statute is written.
What associations keep
Subsection (c) preserves neutral administration, listing five things an association may still require of a gathering under subsection (b), provided the same terms “apply to any other gathering held in a common area”:
“(1) requiring a room rental fee or deposit; (2) limiting the maximum occupancy of the common area where the meeting is to be held; (3) establishing hours during which a meeting may be held in the common area; (4) specifying the common areas of the association that are available to the association members for meetings; or (5) requiring a written reservation or rental agreement.”
The condition attached to the list is comparative, not absolute. The rule must be one that applies to any other common-area gathering. A fee, an occupancy cap or an hours limit that exists only for political meetings is not preserved by subsection (c), and it is precisely the kind of provision subsection (b)'s “has the effect of prohibiting” language reaches.
Two carve-outs from coverage
Subsection (a) removes from the section's scope a common area “that is not made available for meetings” either “due to designated seasonal use” or “other than a meeting of the property owners' association, the board…, or a committee of the association or the association's board.”
The second clause is the more consequential. An association whose clubhouse is reserved for association business and is not offered to members for gatherings of any kind sits outside Section 202.013. The section governs how a meeting space already open to member use is allocated; it does not compel an association to open a space it keeps closed.
Subsection (d) removes a second category entirely: the section “does not apply to a property owners' association that qualifies for tax exempt status under Section 501(c)(3), Internal Revenue Code of 1986.” That exclusion tracks the federal constraints on political campaign intervention by charitable organisations, and it means the answer for a given Texas association can turn on its federal tax classification.
The broader bill that did not pass
HB 621 was the narrow outcome of a wider 2025 effort on association speech and assembly. Senate Bill 700, which addressed “the authority of a property owners' association to regulate the assembly, association, and speech of property owners or residents” in general terms, was referred to Senate State Affairs on 3 February 2025 and received no hearing.3 What became law is confined to officials and qualified candidates in common areas.
Where it leaves political signage
Section 202.013 governs meetings, not signs. Texas restrictions on an association's authority over political signs live elsewhere in Chapter 202 and operate on their own terms; nothing in HB 621 amended them. An association's sign rules are unaffected by this section, and the section's protections do not extend beyond addressing or meeting with members in common areas.
What to watch next
The 2026 general election cycle is the first to run with Section 202.013 in force for its whole span. Because the section prohibits adoption and enforcement rather than creating a cause of action with a stated remedy, how it gets tested in Texas courts — and what a member or candidate can obtain when a provision is enforced against them — remains open. No appellate decision has construed it.
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