Texas HOA Pet Restrictions

Texas pet restrictions at a glance

Section 1: Overview — How pet restrictions work in Texas

Texas has no statute regulating homeowners association pets. Pet restrictions come from a community's recorded declaration or dedicatory instruments and the rules a board adopts, and the main legal limit on them is fair housing law's assistance-animal reasonable-accommodation requirement.¹ Rule-making authority depends on community type across three Property Code chapters: condominiums created on or after January 1, 1994 fall under the Texas Uniform Condominium Act, Tex. Prop. Code ch. 82; pre-1994 condominiums fall under the older Texas Condominium Act, ch. 81; and planned-community property owners' associations fall under the Texas Residential Property Owners Protection Act, ch. 209 — with the declaration or dedicatory instruments carrying the substantive pet rules.²³⁴

Texas has no statutory right to keep a pet that overrides a no-pet declaration, in contrast to California, whose Civil Code § 4715 grants owners a right to keep at least one pet; Texas is a full-coverage, multi-statute state but has not adopted the unified Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act.⁵ The dominant constraint on any Texas pet restriction is the assistance-animal accommodation requirement under the federal Fair Housing Act and the Texas Fair Housing Act, Tex. Prop. Code ch. 301, the latter enforced by the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division.⁶ Nationally, Texas sits with the large majority of states in which pet authority is document-based rather than statutory, while the federal assistance-animal requirement supplies the floor common to every state.¹ What follows sets out the three-chapter framework, the fair housing overlay, the operational rules an association may enforce, and recent legislative and judicial activity.

Section 2: The legal framework for pet restrictions

2A. The three Property Code chapters and the source of pet authority

Pet restrictions in Texas carry no statutory basis. The recorded declaration or dedicatory instruments impose them, along with the rules a board adopts under them. The statutory framework supplies governance and enforcement structure, not the pet rules themselves.

Rule-making authority runs through three chapters. Condominiums whose declarations were recorded on or after January 1, 1994 are governed by the Texas Uniform Condominium Act, Tex. Prop. Code ch. 82, which is based on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act.² Condominiums recorded before that date remain under the older Texas Condominium Act, ch. 81, except that Section 82.002 lists specific Chapter 82 provisions that reach back to all condominiums regardless of creation date.³⁷ Planned-community property owners' associations, non-condominium residential subdivisions, are governed by the Texas Residential Property Owners Protection Act, ch. 209, a bespoke Texas planned-community statute that supplies notice, cure, hearing, records, and foreclosure rules; by its own terms Chapter 209 does not apply to a condominium governed by Chapter 82.⁴⁸ Most associations are also incorporated as nonprofit corporations under the Texas Business Organizations Code, ch. 22, which supplies corporate formalities.⁹

Texas is a multi-statute, non-UCIOA state: Chapter 82 derives from the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act, not the unified Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, and Chapter 209 is a separate Texas statute. The condominium chapters, 82 and 81, and the planned-community chapter, 209, are distinct, and their provisions are not interchangeable. Texas has no statutory pet-keeping right, so the question that actually matters for any community is what the declaration or dedicatory instruments say, read against the applicable chapter and the fair housing floor.⁵

For pet questions, the order of precedence runs: federal and state fair housing law, mandatory, first; then the applicable chapter's mandatory provisions, Chapter 82 for condominiums, Chapter 209 for planned communities; then the declaration or dedicatory instruments; then the bylaws; then board rules. An otherwise valid pet rule in the declaration holds up only to the extent it does not collide with the mandatory statutory framework or the assistance-animal accommodation requirement.

2B. Federal fair housing constraints: assistance animals

The Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq., bars disability discrimination in housing and requires housing providers to make reasonable accommodations in rules and policies whenever necessary to give a person with a disability equal use and enjoyment of a dwelling, under 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(3)(B). Homeowners associations and condominium associations count as covered.¹ Permitting an assistance animal despite a no-pet policy or a pet restriction counts as a reasonable accommodation, and because assistance animals are not pets, no-pet bans, breed limits, size and weight limits, number limits, and pet fees and deposits simply do not reach them.¹⁰

The Fair Housing Act category of "assistance animal" runs broader than the Americans with Disabilities Act category of "service animal." It includes animals that perform tasks and animals that provide disability-related emotional support, with no training requirement for support animals.¹⁰ This is the single most common error on this topic: the ADA's narrow, trained-dog service-animal definition does not control a residential accommodation request, which the broader Fair Housing Act standard governs.

HUD's guidance on this analysis has recently shifted, and boards and managers should treat the current position with care. HUD's operative notice for a decade was FHEO-2020-01, issued January 28, 2020, which treated both service animals and support animals as assistance animals that are not pets.¹⁰ On May 22, 2026, HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, through a memo signed by Assistant Secretary Craig W. Trainor and prompted by a February 2025 executive order directing agencies to prioritize enforcement resources, rescinded FHEO-2020-01 and announced that it will find reasonable cause only where the animal has been individually trained to perform work or tasks directly related to the complainant's disability, aligning HUD's own enforcement with the ADA's trained-animal standard.¹¹ That change is a shift in HUD enforcement priorities, not a change to the statute: the Fair Housing Act itself is unchanged, private lawsuits remain available, and state and local laws are not affected by the change in federal policy. HUD has stated it intends to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking to harmonize its regulations with the ADA before any permanent rule takes effect.¹¹

Where a disability or disability-related need is not obvious, an association may request reliable documentation. It may not require registration, certification, or licensing of the animal, a specific breed, professional training for a support animal, detailed medical records, or any pet deposit, pet fee, or additional insurance for the animal.¹⁰ An association may deny a specific animal only on an individualized finding that it would impose an undue financial and administrative burden, fundamentally alter operations, or that the specific animal poses a direct threat or would cause substantial physical damage no other accommodation could reduce. Denial cannot rest on breed, size, or generalized fear, and the owner remains responsible for the animal's conduct and any damage it causes.¹⁰ The ADA generally governs public accommodations and government programs, not an association's internal residential operations, though it may reach association facilities open to the public, such as a clubhouse rented to non-residents.

2C. Texas law overlay: fair housing act, service animals, and dog law

The Texas Fair Housing Act, Tex. Prop. Code ch. 301, bars housing discrimination based on disability and backs the same assistance-animal accommodation analysis. It is a standard state anti-discrimination statute that operates alongside the federal Fair Housing Act and is expressly intended to provide rights and remedies substantially equivalent to federal law.⁶ The Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division enforces it, and complaints may also be filed with HUD.¹² Because state law operates independently of HUD's enforcement posture, the Texas Fair Housing Act remains a separate avenue for assistance-animal claims after HUD's May 2026 change.

Texas maintains a separate public-accommodations framework for service animals in the Human Resources Code, Tex. Hum. Res. Code ch. 121, which addresses access to public facilities and transportation for persons with disabilities.¹³ Section 121.006 makes it an offense to intentionally or knowingly represent that an animal is an assistance or service animal when it is not specially trained or equipped to help a person with a disability, punishable as a misdemeanor by a fine of not more than $1,000 and 30 hours of community service to be completed in not more than one year.¹⁴ This public-accommodations framework is distinct from the housing accommodation analysis and does not govern an HOA dwelling request.

Texas dog law follows common-law principles. Dog-bite liability is not statutory; it rests on the one-bite rule and negligence, as reflected in the Texas Supreme Court decision Marshall v. Ranne, 511 S.W.2d 255 (Tex. 1974), under which an owner may be liable where the owner knew or had reason to know of the animal's dangerous propensities, or was negligent in handling it.¹⁵ Texas regulates dangerous dogs by statute under Chapter 822 of the Health and Safety Code, which sets registration, restraint, and insurance requirements once a dog is adjudicated dangerous.¹⁶ Section 822.047 bars a county or municipality from adopting breed-specific requirements, allowing only additional dangerous-dog restrictions that are not breed-specific.¹⁷ That preemption reaches government ordinances; it does not bar a private association from adopting a breed rule in its declaration, subject always to the fair housing limit that breed restrictions cannot be applied to an assistance animal.

Section 3: Operational rules and compliance obligations

A. Enforceable pet restrictions

An association may enforce pet restrictions properly adopted in the declaration or dedicatory instruments, including limits on the number of animals, size and weight caps, permitted types, breed rules, and leash and waste rules in common areas, since Texas supplies no pet statute and these terms are matters of the governing documents.⁴ Each restriction is bounded by the fair housing floor and by the requirement that restrictive covenants be enforced consistently. Every such restriction yields to the assistance-animal accommodation requirement, which no declaration term can override.¹

B. Handling an assistance-animal request

When an owner requests an accommodation, the association may ask whether the person has a disability-related need for the animal, and, where the disability or need is not obvious, may request reliable supporting documentation such as a note from a health-care provider with personal knowledge of the requester.¹⁰ The association may not demand certification, registration, an ID card, a specific breed, or proof of professional training for a support animal, and it should respond in a timely, good-faith, interactive manner.¹⁰ A denial is defensible only on an individualized direct-threat or undue-burden finding as to the specific animal; it is not defensible when based on breed, size, or generalized concern.¹⁰

C. Pet fees, deposits, and insurance

An association may charge pet fees or deposits for ordinary pets if the declaration or dedicatory instruments authorize the charge, since the matter is document-based rather than statutory.⁴ It may not charge any pet deposit, pet fee, or additional insurance premium for an assistance animal, though the owner remains liable for actual damage the animal causes.¹⁰

D. Enforcement and disclosure

For planned communities, Chapter 209 requires written notice and, for curable violations, an opportunity to cure before certain enforcement actions such as fines or suspension of common-area use, and an owner may request a hearing before the board, §§ 209.006–.007.¹⁸¹⁹ For condominiums, the Chapter 82 and declaration enforcement provisions apply. Significant disputes proceed in the District Court, the unified trial court of general jurisdiction, with civil appeals to the relevant Texas Court of Appeals and then the Texas Supreme Court; the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is the criminal court of last resort and does not sit in the HOA civil path. Assessment-lien foreclosure, which is distinct from pet-rule enforcement, requires a court order through the expedited foreclosure process under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 736, applied via Section 209.0092.²⁰ Pet and other restrictions are disclosed to buyers through the Chapter 82 resale certificate for condominiums, Section 82.157, and, for planned communities, through the subdivision information and resale certificate under Chapter 207, Section 207.003, which must include known violations affecting the property.²¹²²

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

B. Recent appellate rulings

No qualifying published decision from a Texas Court of Appeals or the Texas Supreme Court in the past 36 months has turned up addressing HOA or condominium pet restrictions, assistance-animal accommodation in a residential association, or a Chapter 822 dangerous-dog appeal. Chapter 822 dangerous-dog determinations are generally resolved at the justice, municipal, or county-court level and rarely reach the intermediate courts of appeals. In the absence of a controlling Texas appellate pet decision, the federal Fair Housing Act and Texas Fair Housing Act assistance-animal frameworks, together with common-law dog-bite liability, control.¹

C. Active legislative debates

Backyard-poultry proposals that would limit association authority over chickens — for example, HB 2013 and SB 141 in the 2025 session — advanced but did not become law, and similar measures may return in the next regular session; these concern poultry rather than household pets and did not alter pet or assistance-animal rules.²⁵

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Among the states, a small group grants a statutory pet-keeping right, and California's Civil Code § 4715, a right to keep at least one pet, is the clearest example; the large majority, including Texas, leave pet authority to the declaration or dedicatory instruments with no pet statute, and every state shares the same federal floor: the Fair Housing Act's assistance-animal requirement.⁵¹ For multi-state operators, the practical implication is that in Texas, the binding pet rules come from the declaration or dedicatory instruments, the Uniform Condominium Act or the Residential Property Owners Protection Act supplies the statutory framework, and the federal assistance-animal analysis applies uniformly.⁴ Texas's distinctive features are its three Property Code chapters, including a real planned-community statute, Chapter 209, with notice and hearing requirements, common-law dog-bite liability paired with statewide breed preemption, and bifurcated courts of last resort in which HOA civil appeals run to the Texas Supreme Court.¹⁷

HOA Weekly's Texas Pet Restrictions coverage updates quarterly as the Legislature and the courts act. The federal Fair Housing Act's assistance-animal framework applies to Texas associations regardless of the state framework.

Footnotes

1. Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3604(f) (reasonable accommodation) ↩
2. Tex. Prop. Code ch. 82, Uniform Condominium Act ↩
3. Tex. Prop. Code ch. 81, Condominiums Created Before Adoption of Uniform Condominium Act ↩
4. Tex. Prop. Code ch. 209, Texas Residential Property Owners Protection Act ↩
5. Cal. Civ. Code § 4715 (California statutory right to keep at least one pet; cited for contrast) ↩
6. Tex. Prop. Code ch. 301, Texas Fair Housing Act ↩
7. Tex. Prop. Code § 82.002 (Applicability; provisions reaching pre-1994 condominiums) ↩
8. Tex. Prop. Code § 209.003(d) (Chapter 209 does not apply to a condominium governed by Chapter 82) ↩
9. Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code ch. 22, Nonprofit Corporations ↩
10. HUD FHEO-2020-01, Assessing a Person's Request to Have an Animal as a Reasonable Accommodation (Jan. 28, 2020) (rescinded May 22, 2026) ↩
11. Holland & Knight, HUD Rescinds Emotional Support Animal Guidance (June 2026) ↩
12. Texas Workforce Commission, Chapter 301, Property Code – Fair Housing Act (enforcement by TWC Civil Rights Division) ↩
13. Tex. Hum. Res. Code ch. 121, Participation in Social and Economic Activities ↩
14. Tex. Hum. Res. Code § 121.006 (Improper Use of Assistance and Service Animals; Offense) ↩
15. Marshall v. Ranne, 511 S.W.2d 255 (Tex. 1974) ↩
16. Tex. Health & Safety Code ch. 822, Regulation of Animals (dangerous dogs, §§ 822.041–.047) ↩
17. Tex. Health & Safety Code § 822.047 (Local Regulation of Dangerous Dogs; breed-specific regulation barred) ↩
18. Tex. Prop. Code § 209.006 (Notice Required Before Enforcement Action) ↩
19. Tex. Prop. Code § 209.007 (Hearing Before Board; Alternative Dispute Resolution) ↩
20. Tex. Prop. Code § 209.0092 (Judicial Foreclosure Required; Rule 736 court order) ↩
21. Tex. Prop. Code § 82.157 (Resale of Unit) ↩
22. Tex. Prop. Code § 207.003 (Delivery of Subdivision Information; resale certificate) ↩
23. HB 4164, 88th Leg., R.S. (2023) (amending Tex. Hum. Res. Code § 121.006) ↩
24. SB 711, 89th Leg., R.S. (2025) (property owners' associations, including condominium associations) ↩
25. SB 141, 89th Leg., R.S. (2025) (municipal or association regulation of chickens; did not pass) ↩