Louisiana · Law guide

Louisiana HOA law guide.

Every Louisiana statute that governs community associations, hosted in full on HOPB with the official text. Louisiana’s HOA law changed on 1 January 2025 — the Homeowners Association Act was replaced by the fifty-section Planned Community Act, and a great deal of advice still in circulation describes the statute that was repealed. The Condominium Act was not touched, so what you own now decides more than it ever has. And because this is the civil-law state, the covenant itself is a Civil Code institution rather than a statutory one. This index is how the pieces fit together, and which one answers your question.

4 statutes Full text on-site Current through the 2025 Regular Session
Which statute governs you

One question decides it: do you own a lot, or a unit?

Louisiana keeps both community statutes in the same Chapter of Title 9, and the Planned Community Act excludes condominiums expressly; the Condominium Act simply applies to whatever a condominium declaration submits to it. A lot in a community whose declaration obliges owners to pay assessments is governed by the Planned Community Act, whose definition at § 9:1141.2(26) says a planned community “shall not include condominium property subject to the Louisiana Condominium Act”. A unit is governed by the Condominium Act. The gap between them opened on 1 January 2025: Acts 2024, No. 158 rewrote the planned-community statute from nine sections to fifty and left the condominium statute untouched. Two Louisiana owners with the same complaint about the same conduct now stand on materially different ground depending on which of the two they own.

01 Louisiana Planned Community ActLa. R.S. 9:1141.1 to 9:1141.50, fifty sections in four Subparts, enacted by Acts 2024, No. 158 and effective 1 January 2025 in place of the Louisiana Homeowners Association Act. It is the first Louisiana statute to give a lot owner a general right to notice, to an open board meeting and to the association's records: open board meetings with five defined executive-session topics and no final vote in session (§ 9:1141.26(B)), thirty days' notice with an agenda, a twenty percent quorum unless the bylaws provide otherwise, and ten percent in an emergency (§ 9:1141.27), proxies and absentee ballots (§ 9:1141.28), an eleven-category records right with seven grounds to withhold (§ 9:1141.36), a budget the owners ratify in any community of more than twenty-five lots (§ 9:1141.34(A)(1)), and notice-and-comment before any rule, every one of which must be reasonable (§ 9:1141.37). Read the scope section before anything else. § 9:1141.3(A) applies the Act to “existing and future planned communities” — and in the same subsection it “shall not be construed to affect the validity or superiority of any provision of a community document filed for registry prior to January 1, 2025”. Subsections (F), (G) and (H) and § 9:1141.6(F) then protect a pre-2025 community's common-area ownership, its organisational structure, its method of amending documents and its method of calculating assessments. Learn the three vote words or the thresholds will mislead you: a majority vote and a two-thirds vote are measured against the voting interest present, but a supermajority vote is more than eighty percent of the voting interest in the association — of everyone (§ 9:1141.2(21), (33), (34)). That is what an amendment restricting use, or setting a minimum lease term, actually costs (§ 9:1141.14(C)). And the association's privilege is not a super-lien: it outranks only what becomes effective against third persons after it is filed, and yields to the Private Works Act (§ 9:1148(B)). 02 Louisiana Condominium ActLa. R.S. 9:1121.101 to 9:1124.117, sixty-three sections in four Subparts — thirty-nine with text and twenty-four blank — enacted by Acts 1979, No. 682. It covers creation and the fourteen mandatory contents of the declaration (§ 9:1122.105), amendment by sixty-seven percent of the association's votes, or any other percentage the declaration specifies (§ 9:1122.119), sixteen association powers, “[s]ubject to the provisions of the declaration” and available “even if unincorporated” (§ 9:1123.102), insurance at eighty percent of actual cash value with the 2019 betterments rule (§ 9:1123.112), a mandatory fidelity bond (§ 9:1123.113), a two-month reserve escrow collected at the initial sale (§ 9:1121.108), and the privilege at § 9:1123.115. The most useful thing to know about it is what did not happen. Acts 2024, No. 158 did not amend it: across all sixty-three sections the amendment years are 1979, 1988, 2003, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016, 2019 and 2022. So the open-meeting rule, the thirty-day notice, the statutory quorum, the proxy and ballot regime, the records catalogue and the ratified budget that lot owners received on 1 January 2025 are nowhere in this Act — verified by reading every section, not inferred from silence. What a unit owner has instead is the bylaws, which “shall provide for the form and manner of administration of the condominium” (§ 9:1123.106), and one sentence of records access (§ 9:1123.108). Three protections do run the other way: late charges are capped at nothing within ten days and never more than thirty percent of the monthly assessment (§ 9:1123.102(11)); the association must serve a sworn statement seven days before filing a privilege, by personal service or registered or certified mail (§ 9:1123.115(A)(3)); and where it files for money not owed it pays the owner's cost of getting the filing released (§ 9:1123.115(A)(4)).
The entity behind it

Required for one kind of association, optional for the other

Since 1 January 2025 a planned-community association must be a nonprofit corporation (§ 9:1141.19) — there is no choice of form for one formed from that date, though § 9:1141.3(G) does not require an association that already existed to change its structure — and the Planned Community Act names the Nonprofit Corporation Law as the statute that fills its gaps (§ 9:1141.20(H)) and supplies its directors' duties (§ 9:1141.21(B)). A condominium association may instead be a profit corporation or an unincorporated association (§ 9:1123.101), and the Condominium Act names no gap-filler at all — only the powers of “legal entities of the same type as the association” (§ 9:1123.102(15)). So for a condominium the first question is which of the three forms yours actually took.

03 Louisiana Nonprofit Corporation LawLa. R.S. 12:201 to 12:269, seventy-eight sections, Chapter 2 of Title 12, enacted by Acts 1968, No. 105. The corporate procedure behind most Louisiana associations: the board and its removal, officers, fiduciary duties, indemnification, conflicts of interest, member meetings, notice, quorum, voting, proxies, records, dues, and the annual report. Four provisions do real work for a homeowner. § 12:217(A) requires every rule of admission, retention, suspension and expulsion to be “reasonable, germane to the purpose of the corporation, and equally enforced as to all members of the same class” — three separate tests, and the third is what selective enforcement runs into. § 12:223(C) lets every voting member examine “in person, or by agent or attorney, at any reasonable time” the records subsection A lists — minutes, the membership record, and the records of assets, liabilities, receipts, disbursements and surplus — with no stated exceptions, though nothing beyond that list either. § 12:229(B)–(C) lets any ten members, or members holding five percent, call the annual meeting if it is six months overdue, and lets a requester call a special meeting himself if the secretary will not. And unless the articles or bylaws provide otherwise, § 12:224(H) lets five or more voting members sue to remove a director for fraudulent or dishonest acts, or gross abuse of authority or discretion. One conflict to know before you act. Removal by vote under § 12:224(E)(4) needs a majority in interest of all the voting members; § 9:1141.39(A) needs a majority of those present. Those are far apart in a large association. The Planned Community Act is the specific statute and § 9:1141.20(H) admits this Chapter only where the community documents fail to provide, so a lot owner reads § 9:1141.39 first. And watch § 12:231(3): at the second meeting after one failed for want of a quorum, any number of members present is a quorum — expressly including for amending the articles or dissolving.
What a board cannot do to you

Nine protected characteristics, and a duty that reaches your association's rules

Fair housing is the one body of law that applies to an association whatever your declaration says, and Louisiana's version is broader than the federal Act. It reaches an association because § 51:2603(12) defines person to include corporations, associations and unincorporated organisations, and because § 51:2606(A)(6)(c)(ii) makes it discrimination to refuse “to make reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services” — which is a description of what an association does.

04 Louisiana Equal Housing Opportunity ActLa. R.S. 51:2601 to 51:2614, fourteen sections, Chapter 43 of Title 51, effective 1 January 1992. Louisiana protects nine characteristics, not the federal seven: race, colour, religion, sex, disability, familial status and national origin, plus natural, protective, or cultural hairstyle (Acts 2022, No. 529) and military status (Acts 2025, No. 100), the former defined by an open list including afros, dreadlocks, twists, locs, braids, cornrow braids, Bantu knots and curls (§ 51:2603(11)). Any summary written before 2022 lists only seven. Alongside the accommodation duty sits the modification right — a physical change the requester pays for (§ 51:2606(A)(6)(c)(i)) — and the retaliation provision at § 51:2609, which the § 51:2604(B) exemptions do not touch because those are keyed to § 51:2606 — though the religious, private-club and occupancy-limit provisions of § 51:2605 are written against the whole Chapter. Two things most Louisiana summaries get wrong. The Act is administered by the Department of Justice, office of the attorney general (§ 51:2610(A)), not by a human rights commission; and the private two-year action under § 51:2613(A) is brought in state court, not federal — with § 51:2613(H) making the forums one-way: electing federal court forecloses the same claim in state court (§ 51:2613(H)), while § 51:2613(G) preserves the federal causes of action. § 51:2613(A) is itself available only “[i]f no complaint has been filed with the attorney general”; a complainant who went to the attorney general proceeds under (C) instead. The complaint deadline to the attorney general is one year (§ 51:2611(B)); two years is the outer limit for any action under the Chapter (§ 51:2613(C)). Note the precondition on the private action: § 51:2613(A) is available “[i]f no complaint has been filed with the attorney general”; a complainant who went to the attorney general proceeds under (C) instead. Read a conciliation agreement carefully: every one of them must include a waiver and covenant not to sue (§ 51:2611(E)).
Everything that is somewhere else

In a civil-law state, the covenant itself is not in a statute

This is where Louisiana differs from every other state on this site. The restrictions in your declaration are building restrictions, an institution of the Civil Code — and the Code gives them a way to end. Add the collection Part, the transfer-fee chapter, the disclosure chapter and three free-standing sections that name associations, and you have the rest of the answer.

05 Related & miscellaneous Louisiana statutesEight topics and five myth-busters, drawn from the Civil Code and Titles 9, 12 and 51. Civil Code articles 775 to 783 govern building restrictions: they are “incorporeal immovables and real rights likened to predial servitudes” (art. 777), they may impose affirmative duties but not a fee on alienation, lease or encumbrance (art. 778), and — the sentence worth knowing above all others — under art. 781 no action for injunction or for damages on account of the violation may be brought more than two years from the commencement of a noticeable violation, after which “the immovable on which the violation occurred is freed of the restriction that has been violated.” Doubt is resolved “in favor of the unrestricted use of the immovable” (art. 783) — but the same article makes the Condominium, Timesharing and Planned Community Acts supersede that Title on conflict, and inside a planned community § 9:1141.3(E) requires a building restriction affecting association property to be liberally construed instead. Also here: R.S. 9:1114, enacted by Acts 2025, No. 224, which overrides any covenant, declaration, lease or rental agreement outlawing or restricting display of a removable, portable flag of the United States, with injunctive relief, costs and attorney fees for an owner — while leaving an association free to enforce reasonable provisions as to size, time, place and manner (§ 9:1114(A), (B)). The privilege end to end (9:1145–9:1148), including the ten-business-day payoff statement that binds the association. § 9:1255(C), the solar subsection every summary drops, which preserves a building restriction requiring approval before installation. Private transfer fees (9:3131–9:3136) and the carve-out that keeps your assessments outside the ban. The volunteer-director shield at 9:2792.7. And what a seller must disclose about your association (9:3198). Verified absences, searched across all 6,998 held sections: Louisiana has no political-sign statute, and nothing protecting clotheslines, rain barrels, xeriscaping or EV charging from an association's rules.

General information, not legal advice. Statutory references are to the Louisiana Revised Statutes and the Louisiana Civil Code as published by the Louisiana State Legislature, including enactments through the 2025 Regular Session; the statutes are amended every session, so confirm the current text against the official source.

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