Jewish Herald-Voice: "Texas homeowners’ associations no longer will be able to ban residents from affixing a mezuzah to their front doorposts if a bill pending the Texas House passes. The bill, HB 3025, is waiting for passage by the House Committee on Business and Industry. If the committee passes the bill, it will go to the House floor, where the Texas House of Representatives will vote on it."
-----------
Another state making another special exception. Why not just force associations to show some respect for civil liberties in general?
4 comments:
"Why not just force associations to show some respect for civil liberties in general?"
Better yet, why not just end this misguided policy of privatizing local government with wall to wall mandatory membership homeowner associations?
Civil rights don't apply because these are corporate and not public constitutional governments that are state political subdivisions.
Asking for civil rights in an HOA is like ordering a hamburger in a shoe store.
amen. hoas were a bad idea from the get-go.
Asking for civil rights in an HOA is like demanding civil rights from King George. It's time for a tea party.
Now on the mezuzah issue... The bill as originally filed was obviously promulgated by a particular religious group, however, the bill is not limited to mezuzahs - rather such icons were expressly included.
Of course, this begs the question as to why one needs to be making an "exception" at all. The problem is giving credence to rules that prohibited any of this in the first place or giving private organizations police powers to fine and threaten people with foreclosure over their religious beliefs or exercises of first amendment speech.
The bill is HB 3025 in the 81st Texas Legislative session. The problem with virtually all of these bills (religion, solar, election sign, etc.) is that in addition to whatever they take away from an HOA, they always also give the HOA an additional private cause of action to determine whether something "threatens public safety" (as if that was the HOA's right), "violates a law" (as if homeowners otherwise had a right to violate a law) and even gives the HOA the power to enter property to remove such items. It's time for this to end.
And these exceptions bills usually create some "reasonableness" exception to the exception, so the association can say it's too big, or whatever.
Post a Comment