Why this is the most consequential Wyoming HOA bill of the cycle

Wyoming has no comprehensive HOA statute. An incorporated Wyoming association is a nonprofit corporation, and the Wyoming Nonprofit Corporation Act, Title 17 chapter 19, is what governs how its members meet and vote.

That Act already permits directors to participate in board meetings by simultaneous communication. It says nothing equivalent about members. W.S. § 17-19-701(c), as compiled today, provides only that meetings “may be held in or out of this state at the place stated in or fixed in accordance with the bylaws. If no place is stated in or fixed in accordance with the bylaws, annual and regular meetings shall be held at the corporation’s principal office.”²

The statute is written around a place. The bill would have added the alternative.

What is left open

Since 2020 a great many Wyoming associations have held annual meetings by video. In a state whose association stock is concentrated in resort and mountain communities with large absentee ownership — Teton County, Star Valley, the Bighorns, the Snowy Range — a video meeting is often the only way a quorum is assembled at all.

Where an association’s bylaws expressly authorise remote participation, the bylaws are doing the work and the statutory silence matters less. Where they do not, the position is that the governing statute contemplates a place and does not say a remotely participating member is present. Whether a Wyoming court would treat a member who joined by video as present at a meeting held under bylaws that say nothing about it is an open question — there is no Wyoming appellate decision on W.S. § 17-19-701, and this column does not predict one.

What the defeat of Section 3 means specifically is that no statute now declares past remote meetings proper. A budget ratification, a special assessment or a board election conducted at such a meeting rests on the association’s own documents.

Two votes

The 29–31 tally is not a defeat on the merits. It is a failed introduction: under Wyoming Constitution art. 3, § 6, “During the budget session no bills except the budget bill may be introduced unless placed on call by a two-thirds vote of either house.” A bill can command a clear majority of the chamber and still never be introduced. Fifty-nine House bills and thirty-two Senate files met that fate in 2026.

Nobody is carrying it to 2027

The Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee met May 21–22, 2026 in Lander and its minutes contain no mention of nonprofit corporations, remote participation or Title 17 chapter 19. The committee’s approved 2026 interim topics do not include it. Its 2027 work is going in a different direction — fraud protection, deed fraud, registered agent duties, and a resurrection of 2026 HB0125 on administrative dissolution for fraud.³

So a second attempt would need an individual member to file it in the 2027 General Session, where introduction requires a simple majority rather than two-thirds. On the 2026 arithmetic, a majority is a threshold this bill cleared.

Where the authority actually lies today

An association’s articles and bylaws are the operative source. The bill’s own opening words — “Unless the articles or bylaws provide otherwise” — were drafted as a default that documents could displace, which is an acknowledgment that the documents come first. In Wyoming they come first with nothing underneath them.