Connecticut HOA Rooftop Solar: Protected Outside Condos and Co-ops

Public Act 22-25, section 16, inserted a new subsection (g) into section 47-261b of the Common Interest Ownership Act, the section that governs association rules. The drafting choice that matters most is the opening clause: "In the case of a common interest community that is not a condominium or a cooperative." Under the definitions in Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47-202, those are the three species of common interest community in Connecticut, so subsection (g) reaches only the third, the planned community, where the owner holds the unit and its roof in fee rather than as part of a shared building. A Connecticut condominium owner and a Connecticut cooperative shareholder get nothing from subsection (g), and neither does a townhouse owner in a planned community whose roof is continuous with a neighbor's, because the protection carries the express condition that the roof "is not shared with any other unit owner."

Where the subsection does apply, it is a covenant-level prohibition on the association rather than a permission slip. The association may not adopt or enforce any rules that would have the effect of prohibiting installation. The phrase "have the effect of" matters, because it reaches an aesthetic standard or an architectural review rule that never mentions solar but leaves no compliant place to put an array. Subsection (c) is the companion: an association that adopts construction, design and aesthetic rules must also adopt procedures for enforcing them and for approving construction applications, including a reasonable time within which the association shall act after an application is submitted and the consequences of its failure to act. A Connecticut board that has never adopted those procedures has no functioning approval process to hold a solar application in.

The three carve-outs in subsection (g) are the association's remaining tools. It may write rules governing the size and the manner of affixing, installing or removing the system, rules setting the owner's responsibilities for periodic upkeep and maintenance, and a prohibition on any unit owner installing a system on any common elements. That last one is why ground mounts, carport arrays and community-owned roofs sit outside the protection entirely in Connecticut.

Any such rule still has to survive the rest of section 47-261b. Subsection (i) states flatly that each rule of the association shall be reasonable. Subsection (a) requires the executive board to give all unit owners notice at least ten days before adopting, amending or repealing any rule, and that notice must include the text of the proposed rule or amendment or the text of the rule proposed to be repealed, plus the date on which the board will act after considering owner comments. Subsection (b) requires the association to give notice of the action afterward and to include a copy of the new or amended rule. The Connecticut Supreme Court treated these requirements as jurisdictional in 321 Conn. 29, holding that an association policy was a rule rather than an internal business operating procedure and that failure to adopt it under the notice and comment requirements was a jurisdictional defect. A solar rule an owner is told about for the first time in a violation letter is very likely unenforceable for that reason alone.

One applicability point runs the owner's way. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47-216(a) lists section 47-261b among the CIOA provisions that apply to common interest communities created in this state before January 1, 1984. Older Connecticut planned communities therefore get subsection (g) and the notice rules, subject to the qualifier in section 47-216(a) that those sections apply only to events and circumstances occurring after January 1, 1984 and do not invalidate existing provisions of the declaration, bylaws, surveys or plans. Section 47-261g, the electric vehicle charging statute enacted in the same 2022 act, is not on that list, so the two 2022 owner protections do not have the same reach in older Connecticut communities.

Nothing in section 47-261b creates a penalty against an association, and no Connecticut agency licenses or polices association rulemaking. The remedy is that the offending rule is void as applied: an association may not adopt or enforce a rule with the prohibited effect, so a fine or a cease and desist letter resting on such a rule has no lawful basis. An owner who is fined anyway should first use the CIOA fine procedure, since Conn. Gen. § 47-244 conditions a penalty on notice and an opportunity to be heard before the executive board, and should raise both the substantive bar in subsection (g) and any failure to follow the ten-day notice and comment steps in subsection (a).

Beyond that the forum is Superior Court, where the association's unpaid fines and assessments are also litigated because section 47-258 gives the association a statutory lien. Owners in a condominium or cooperative have no claim under subsection (g) at all and must look to their declaration, since the General Assembly wrote them out of the protection on its face.