Besides making sure grass gets mowed, aesthetic rules are followed and fee increases that can cost some property owners thousands, homeowners associations can also force members to take political signs out of their yards.
Whatever happened to freedom of speech, you say?
Despite political speech being highly protected in the United States, HOAs have purview over lawns and homes in their neighborhoods. With few limitations, they can regulate yard signs.
Two Ohio lawmakers now want to significantly limit that power.
An Ohio House bill introduced by co-sponsors Rep. Brian Lorenz (R-Powell) and Thomas Hall (R-Middletown) aims to make it so that no covenants, conditions or deed restrictions can prohibit political yard signs that endorse candidates or beliefs.
At a time when candidates for governor and U.S. Senate, among other races, have yard signs distributed throughout the state in preparation for the upcoming general election on Nov. 3, the issue is even more relevant.
“Sometimes HOAs can become overzealous and overstep their bounds,” Lorenz said. “This legislation will ensure people’s rights to support their party or candidate of choice are protected with the same level of protection as speech or expression outside of politics.”
However, the bill — introduced first in 2024 (House Bill 668) and again during the current session (House Bill 16) — has never made it beyond being heard in committee.
In November 2024, the bill was heard in the House’s State and Local Government Committee. More recently, it was referred to the House's General Government committee in January 2025 and has had some hearings since.
“It's a First Amendment right. It's a free speech right,” Lorenz said. "It stymies free speech."
Though the legislature is not in session now, Lorenz said he plans to push for its passage in the upcoming lame duck session. Any bills that don't pass before the two-year session ends in December must restart the legislative process next year.
"I'll push to get it over the finish line and hopefully get it into law before the end of the year," Lorenz told The Dispatch.
Under the bill, HOAs could still restrict for how long and when the signs are up and the size of the sign, Lorenz said, but not the presence of them in totality. He amended the bill to add such regulations in part because he believes the inconsistency in what individual associations currently allow is unfair.
"We're inconsistently applying free speech," he said.
What about displaying potentially 'political' flags?
Ohio lawmakers have been trying to protect the right for citizens to fly certain flags outside their homes for nearly a decade.
They didn't have much luck until earlier this year.
In 2017, a retired police officer was forced by his New Albany condominium association to take down a Thin Blue Line Flag.
The flag, also known as the Blue Lives Matter flag, is a black and white version of the American flag with a blue line through the center said to represent how police maintain order during times of chaos.
Then-House Bill 230 was adopted by the House, but stalled in the Senate in 2017.
This year, the Senate introduced and passed Senate Bill 202 to prohibit landlords and mobile park operators from banning the same flag or emblem, after a grieving father was told it was a political statement.
Thomas DiSario got the flag at the funeral of his son, Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric DiSario, who was killed in the line of duty in 2017 while responding to a domestic violence situation at a nursing home in the small village of Kirkersville, about 25 miles east of Columbus.
On May 13, nine years and one day since the village suffered the loss of four people at the hands of a gunman, the bill, named after DiSario's son, passed.
It was referred to a House committee a week later. Since, some have expressed unhappiness that it doesn't protect the flying of other types of flags.
Underserved communities reporter Danae King can be reached at dking@dispatch.com or on X at @DanaeKing.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Freedom of speech? HOAs in Ohio can restrict that. See why, how
