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Legal Responsibilities and Liabilities. This article first appeared in The Communicator Magazine, Winter 2025 Issue.

By Holly Lull

WHETHER YOU LIVE in a quiet suburban neighborhood, condo, coop, master, sub, or other type of planned community association, you likely have a board of well-intentioned volunteers dedicated to maintaining the charm and harmony of their shared slice of home. However, when what seems like a minor decision about a violation or property boundary ends up leading to a lawsuit, it becomes clear that the board has unknowingly overstepped their legal authority.

This scenario is not uncommon. Across the country, community association boards face significant legal challenges, often stemming from misunderstandings or misapplications of the law or their responsibilities. These legal missteps can lead to costly consequences for both the board members and the communities they serve, highlighting the critical importance of understanding the legal responsibilities and po...

By Melissa Bauman Ward, Esq., CCAL 

(Second in a two-part series)

In Part 1 of this article, we examined different kinds of bias and considered ways that we could recognize implicit and explicit bias in our communities generally and in the way we interact with each other. In Part 2, we consider specific areas of our written documents and governance procedures where bias may be found and look at ways to eliminate or avoid negative bias in these contexts.

OVERT RACISM: UNLAWFUL LANGUAGE IN CC&RS

Unfortunately, there are still many documents in use which contain explicitly racist restrictive covenants. These outdated, offensive restrictions often take the form of identifying racial groups that are prohibited from owning property, or even residing in a community. Obviously, such overt racism is a violation of federal and state law. Despite some progress being made around fair housing laws and practice, the issue of what to do with these odious documents remains.¹ Encouragingly, in Cali...