Colorado HOA Flag Display Rights Under CCIOA

Section 38-33.3-106.5 sits in the Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act (CCIOA), the statute governing planned communities, condominiums, and cooperatives that record a declaration in Colorado. Subsection (1) opens: "Notwithstanding any provision in the declaration, bylaws, or rules and regulations of the association to the contrary, an association shall not prohibit" the rights listed in (1)(a), which covers flying a flag on the owner's own property, in a unit window, or on a balcony adjoining the unit.

The protection is content-neutral, not limited to the American flag. Before a 2021 rewrite (H.B. 21-1310), Colorado's statute covered only the U.S. flag and required federal Flag Code compliance. The current text drops both limits: an association "shall not prohibit or regulate the display of flags on the basis of their subject matter, message, or content," so state flags, military and first-responder service flags, sports pennants, and political or holiday flags all qualify equally. The one carve-out: "the association may prohibit flags bearing commercial messages," so a business-advertising flag can still be banned outright.

Associations keep narrower authority: they "may adopt reasonable, content-neutral rules to regulate the number, location, and size of flags and flagpoles, but shall not prohibit the installation of a flag or flagpole." A board can cap how many flags fly at once or set a maximum pole height, but it cannot use those rules to ban flags or flagpoles altogether.

Because 106.5 sits in CCIOA's public-policy range (§§ 104 to 111), C.R.S. § 38-33.3-117 extends it to communities formed before CCIOA's July 1, 1992 effective date, so pre-1992 HOAs and condo associations are bound too. Owners outside a common interest community, a standalone home with no HOA, fall outside this statute entirely because there is no association rule for it to override.

An association violates § 38-33.3-106.5 the moment its declaration, bylaws, or rules single out a flag by message, ban flagpoles outright, or restrict flags to the American flag alone. A unit owner can sue under C.R.S. § 38-33.3-123 for a declaratory judgment or injunction voiding the rule or fine. If the owner prevails, the court must award reasonable attorney fees and costs, and the association cannot recover its own fees from the owner in that action.