Wyoming’s HOA political sign bill died a third time, without a floor vote
Wyoming’s HOA political sign bill died a third time, without a floor vote
2026-09-19 · Wyoming · Legislation · Did not pass
What happened. Wyoming’s only recurring HOA bill died again, for the third time in four years, and for the third time without any chamber ever voting on its merits. Campaign signs in Wyoming communities remain governed entirely by recorded covenants.
The 2026 bill
HB0189, “Homeowners associations-display of political campaign signs,” LSO draft 26LSO-0464, sponsored by Representative Nina Webber alone. Its status history is three lines: bill number assigned February 11, 2026; received for introduction February 11; “H Did not Consider for Introduction” on February 13, 2026. There is no recorded introduction vote because the House never called it up. Fiscal note: “No fiscal or personnel impact.”1
The 2026 session was a budget session, in which the Wyoming Constitution, art. 3, § 6 requires a two-thirds vote merely to introduce a non-budget bill. HB0189 never reached even that stage.
What it would have created
A new W.S. § 22-25-117. The definition was broad:
“‘homeowners association’ means any incorporated or unincorporated association that is owned by or whose members consist primarily of the owners of property governed by an enforceable legal document through which the owners, or the board of directors or similar governing body, manage or regulate a residential subdivision, planned unit development, condominium or townhouse development, cooperative, mobile home association, nonprofit land trust or similar planned residential development.”
The prohibition:
“Except as otherwise provided by this section, no homeowners association shall prohibit the indoor or outdoor display of a political campaign sign, including any sign or flag advertising a candidate for nomination or election to public office or for any ballot proposition.”
The eleven powers it preserved
Subsection (c) is the part that makes the bill readable as a negotiated compromise rather than a prohibition. An association would have retained the power to:
- Require signs be “ground-mounted or attached to a fence”
- Limit display to one sign per candidate or ballot proposition
- Bar display before the candidate files for candidacy, and more than 30 days after the general election
- Bar attachment to “plants, traffic control devices, streetlights, trailers or vehicles”
- Bar painting of architectural surfaces
- Bar signs that “threaten public health or safety”
- Cap size at four feet by six feet
- Bar signs that violate a law, and obscene content by reference to W.S. § 6-4-301(a)(iii)
- Bar signs “accompanied by music or other sounds, streamers, flags, inflatables”
Subsection (d) let the association “request removal” of a non-conforming sign — a request, with no enforcement mechanism attached.
The sleeper clause
Section 2 of the 2026 bill would have limited its reach dramatically:
“This act shall apply to homeowners associations that are newly created or whose by-laws are created or amended to impose restrictions on political signage on or after July 1, 2026.”
Every existing Wyoming covenant restricting signs would have been untouched. The bill would have bound new communities and any association that amended its documents on the subject after the effective date — which is close to the opposite of the preemption statute it is usually described as.
Three attempts, three different deaths
| Bill | Sponsors | How it died |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 HB0189 | Reps. Winter, Jennings, Knapp, Ward | House Corporations, Do Pass Failed 4–4 on a tie, Jan. 27, 2023; died in committee Feb. 7 |
| 2025 HB0339 | Reps. Webber, Andrew, Brady, Guggenmos, Hoeft, McCann, Wasserburger, Wharff | House Labor recommended amend and do pass 8–0 on Feb. 5, 2025, placed on general file, then never taken up in Committee of the Whole before the Feb. 10 cutoff |
| 2026 HB0189 | Rep. Webber alone | Did not consider for introduction, Feb. 13, 2026 |
The 2025 version came closest: a unanimous committee recommendation, and then silence on the floor. It differed from the 2026 rewrite in two ways worth noting. It was drafted as W.S. § 22-25-116, used a 90-days-before-the-primary window rather than candidate filing, and carried a criminal penalty — it amended W.S. § 22-26-112(a)(ix) to make violation a misdemeanour “punishable by not more than six (6) months in a county jail or a fine of not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000.00), or both.”2
The 2026 rewrite dropped the criminal penalty entirely and still could not get called up.
Where the drafting sits, and why that matters
All three bills were drafted into Title 22, the election code. Wyoming’s actual covenant statute is somewhere else: in 2024 the Legislature created Article 5, “COVENANTS,” in Title 34, chapter 1, and put a single section in it — W.S. § 34-1-501, on home-based child care. That article is the state’s only covenant-preemption statute, and it has one section in it.
No committee is carrying it into 2027
No 2026 interim committee has an HOA, covenant or common-interest-community topic on its approved list. Representative Webber sits on the Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee, whose six approved topics contain nothing on associations. A fourth attempt would have to come from an individual member in the 2027 General Session, where introduction requires only a majority rather than two-thirds.
The current position in Wyoming is unchanged: no statute addresses campaign signs, flags or political displays in community associations, and the recorded declaration is the entire source of the rule.
Related Wyoming HOA Topics
- HB0189 (2026), “Homeowners associations-display of political campaign signs” — introduced bill text, Wyoming Legislature ↩
- HB0339 (2025), same catch title — introduced bill text, including the criminal penalty at W.S. § 22-26-112(a)(ix) ↩
- HB0189 (2026) bill record and status history, Wyoming Legislature ↩
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