The waiver argument, and why it failed

The county's most natural defence was that the plaintiffs could hardly complain about notice when they had shown up and spoken. Section 15.2-2204(B) appears to support that: it excuses a notice violation as to landowners who had actual notice or who actively participated.

The court read the two subsections as doing different jobs. Subsection B is a saving provision for the individual written notice owed to affected and adjacent landowners. Subsection A imposes a public advertising requirement owed to the public at large. A person's own knowledge cures the first and has nothing to do with the second.

For an association, that is the operative point. Turning out in force at a hearing does not forfeit the ability to challenge how that hearing was advertised.

Standing is not dispensed in gross

The court also corrected the trial court on a standing question, and this half cuts against challengers.

Quoting DaimlerChrysler and, within it, Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 358 n.6 (1996): “standing is not dispensed in gross.” Standing to challenge one of several legally independent ordinances adopted at the same meeting does not automatically confer standing to challenge the others. Each must be established separately — which, on this record, the evidence did.

In a similar challenge that is a pleading point rather than a merits one: injury has to be established ordinance by ordinance.

The companion decision, which the association lost

The same association had been in the same court eight months earlier and lost. In Oak Valley Homeowners Association, Inc. v. Prince William County Board of Supervisors, Record No. 1144-24-4, decided July 22, 2025, also published and also by Judge Raphael, the association sought to invalidate a comprehensive plan amendment on the ground that the Board violated Code §§ 15.2-2204 and -2229 by failing to “listen to and consider” public comments received at an all-night hearing immediately before the vote.²

The circuit court sustained the Board's demurrer. The Court of Appeals affirmed: the landowners had pleaded enough for standing, but they “failed to state a claim for any statutory violation.” There is no statutory duty on a Virginia governing body to listen to public comment before voting.

Put the two decisions side by side and the rule is clear. Virginia's public-participation statutes regulate process with precision and say nothing about attention. An association that argues the board did not care will lose. An association that argues the advertisement was defective can void the ordinance.

Why associations have standing at all

Both opinions accept that a homeowners association and its members can establish standing to challenge a nearby land-use decision on the ordinary proximity and particularised-harm test — the same test an individual landowner uses. The association's threatened injury in the Digital Gateway litigation was found to be more severe and permanent than that of other objectors.

The conditions that change the answer

The challenge must be timely under § 15.2-2204(E). Void ab initio is a powerful remedy and the statute puts a clock on reaching it.

Standing must be pleaded and proved for each ordinance.

A locality's own self-imposed advertising requirements count. The opinion says compliance is required with § 15.2-2204(A) “and with any non-conflicting advertising requirements self-imposed by ordinance” — here, a county zoning ordinance provision.

A petition for appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia was filed in this litigation after the March 2026 decision. Its disposition could not be confirmed as of this writing.

What to watch next

Whether the Supreme Court of Virginia takes the case. It refused the association's petition in the earlier comprehensive-plan appeal by order dated December 23, 2025.