Vermont's covenant-scrub bill was never drafted
Vermont's covenant-scrub bill was never drafted
2026-09-19 · Vermont · Legislation · Did not pass
Vermont voided covenants against solar collectors and clotheslines in 2009. Seventeen years later, thousands of Vermont declarations still contain the voided language — and a bill to make associations remove it died after a single committee date.
H.127, An act relating to deed restrictions and renewable energy devices, was introduced by Rep. Leonora Dodge of Essex on January 30, 2025 and referred to the House Committee on General and Housing. The committee took it up on March 21, 2025. Nothing followed. It died with the biennium on May 29, 2026.1
The whole of it
Like H.562, this was a short-form bill: a statement of purpose with no statutory text ever drafted. It read: “This bill proposes to require home owners associations to remove references to restrictions on energy devices based on renewable resources in conflict with 27 V.S.A. § 544.”
That is a housekeeping mandate, and housekeeping mandates are the kind of bill that dies quietly. The problem it names, though, is real and it is not going away on its own.
Why the dead language still matters
A void covenant is unenforceable. It is not invisible. It sits in the recorded declaration, it appears in the documents an owner receives at closing under 27A V.S.A. § 4-109, and it is what an owner reads before deciding whether to ask.
Section 544 makes the restriction unenforceable against the owner; it does not oblige anyone to tell the owner that. An architectural committee applying its written standards in good faith is applying a rule that has been a nullity since May 27, 2009.
The fee provision sharpens the point. Section 544(b): “In any litigation arising under the provisions of this section, the prevailing party shall be entitled to costs and reasonable attorney's fees.” A Vermont association that denies a solar application on the strength of a void covenant is exposed to the owner's fees as well as its own.
Who § 544 binds
Broadly, and this is the part most Vermont declarations were not drafted against. The second sentence of § 544(a) reaches “any entity granted the power or right in any deed restriction, covenant, or similar binding agreement to approve, forbid, control, or direct alteration of property with respect to residential dwellings.”
That is not a defined term borrowed from Title 27A. It captures an architectural review committee, a design review board, a declarant exercising retained approval rights, and a property owners' association that is not a common interest community at all.
And § 544 names clotheslines in the operative sentence alongside solar collectors. Vermont is one of the few states to do so expressly. A Vermont declaration banning outdoor drying has been unenforceable for as long as the solar ban has.
What the board actually keeps
One thing: placement on the roof. The reviewing entity “may determine the specific location where solar collectors may be installed on the roof within an orientation to the south or within 45° east or west of due south, provided that this determination does not impair the effective operation of the solar collectors.”
That is a narrow power and it comes with its own defeat condition. An association that uses it to push an array to a location that shades out is outside the proviso.
How a Vermont board can fix this without a statute
27A V.S.A. § 1-206 lets a common interest community created before January 1, 1999 amend its declaration, bylaws or plats “to achieve any result permitted by this title, regardless of what applicable law provided before this title was enacted”, following the amendment procedure in the instruments themselves or, failing that, the Act's. Removing a provision that is already void is the least contentious amendment a Vermont association will ever put to its owners.
What to watch next
The scrub problem got larger in 2026, not smaller. Act 149 narrowed § 544's patio-railing carve-out for plug-in photovoltaic devices, and Act 168 added 27A V.S.A. § 3-125 voiding covenants against electric-vehicle charging equipment. Every Vermont declaration written before July 1, 2026 that regulates balcony fixtures or parking-space alterations now has a second layer of language that cannot be enforced as written.
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