Illinois Condo and HOA Flag Display Rights (765 ILCS 605/18.6)

Section 18.6 opens with a covenant-voiding clause. It applies notwithstanding any provision in the declaration, bylaws, rules, regulations, agreements or other instruments of a condominium association, a master association or a common interest community association, and notwithstanding a board's construction of any of those instruments. That phrasing matters in Illinois practice: an existing recorded covenant banning flags is not merely unenforceable going forward, it is overridden as written, and a board cannot restore the ban by reinterpreting an ambiguous architectural clause.

The protected location is narrow and specific. The statute reaches the limited common areas and facilities of a unit owner, meaning the balcony, patio, terrace, front stoop or yard area assigned exclusively to that owner's unit, and the immediately adjacent exterior of the building in which the unit is located. It does not reach general common elements. An owner has no statutory right under this section to plant a flag on the shared front lawn of the development, on the clubhouse, or on the roof, and a board may prohibit that without touching Section 18.6 at all.

The flagpole right is separate from the flag right and is stated in its own sentence. A board may not prohibit the installation of a flagpole for the American flag or a military flag in the same protected locations. Illinois then leaves the board two levers: it may adopt reasonable rules and regulations regarding the location of a flagpole and reasonable rules regarding its size. Unlike some states, Illinois fixes no maximum height in feet, no maximum flag dimension in square feet and no cap on the number of flags. Those figures come from the association's own rules, and the only statutory test is reasonableness.

For the American flag, the board's placement and manner rules must be consistent with Sections 4 through 10 of Chapter 1 of Title 4 of the United States Code, the federal flag code covering the pledge, the time and occasions for display, position, manner and respect for the flag. A board rule that contradicts the flag code, for example one forbidding night display of a properly illuminated flag, is not consistent with those sections. For a military flag the statute drops the flag code cross reference entirely and requires only that placement and manner rules be reasonable.

The definitions do real work. An American flag or military flag must be made of fabric, cloth or paper and displayed from a staff, from a flagpole or in a window. The statute expressly excludes any depiction or emblem of a flag made of lights, paint, roofing, siding, paving materials, flora or balloons, or any other similar building, landscaping or decorative component. A flag painted on a garage door, worked into a paver driveway, spelled out in plantings or built from rope lighting is outside the protection, and an association may enforce its architectural rules against all of those.

Which military flags qualify depends on which Act governs the association, and this is where Illinois splits. Under 765 ILCS 605/18.6, a military flag is a flag of any branch of the United States armed forces or the Illinois National Guard and the Honor and Remember Flag, the last item added by Public Act 103-409 effective January 1, 2024. The parallel section in the Common Interest Community Association Act, 765 ILCS 160/1-70, still carries its original text from Public Act 96-1400 effective July 29, 2010, and defines a military flag only as a flag of a branch of the United States armed forces or the Illinois National Guard. A homeowner association reading only its own Act would find no Honor and Remember Flag right. Section 18.6 supplies it anyway, because 18.6 names common interest community associations in its own operative sentence.

The split cuts the other way for small associations. Under 765 ILCS 160/1-75, a common interest community association organized under the General Not For Profit Corporation Act of 1986 with 10 units or fewer, or with annual budgeted assessments of $100,000 or less, is exempt from the entire Common Interest Community Association Act, including Section 1-70, unless a majority of its directors or members affirmatively elects coverage. The Condominium Property Act version has no such exemption, so a small exempt homeowner association is still barred from prohibiting the flag by 765 ILCS 605/18.6.

Flags are not signs. Political and other signs in Illinois associations run on a different track, principally the limit in 765 ILCS 605/18.4(h) that no rule or regulation may impair rights guaranteed by the First Amendment or by Section 4 of Article I of the Illinois Constitution. Section 18.6 gives no help to a banner, a pennant, a sports flag, a seasonal decorative flag or a garden flag, none of which meet its definitions.

Section 18.6 sets no fine, no penalty and no state enforcement agency. It works by voiding the board's rule rather than punishing the board, so the practical question is what happens when a board fines an owner anyway. Both Acts require process first. Under 765 ILCS 605/18.4(l), a condominium board may levy reasonable fines for violations of the declaration, bylaws and rules only after notice and an opportunity to be heard, and 765 ILCS 160/1-30(g) imposes the identical notice and hearing condition on a common interest community association board. An owner fined for a protected flag therefore has two independent answers at the hearing: the rule is void under Section 18.6, and the fine fails if the board skipped the notice or the hearing.

If the board persists, the remedy is a suit in the circuit court of the county where the property sits, seeking a declaration that the rule is void and an injunction against enforcement, with the fine vacated. Before court there is an administrative route, and it has its own deadlines. 765 ILCS 615/35 requires most Illinois associations to adopt a written complaint policy and to issue a final determination in writing, marked clearly and conspicuously as final, within 180 days after receiving the complaint. 765 ILCS 615/40 then lets a unit owner ask the Condominium and Common Interest Community Ombudsperson for help resolving a dispute that involves a violation of the Condominium Property Act or the Common Interest Community Association Act, filed within 30 days after that final adverse decision, provided the owner owes no outstanding assessments unless those are central to the dispute and the dispute arose within the preceding 2 calendar years. That route is subject to appropriation, the Ombudsperson assists only parties who mutually agree to participate, and both sections are scheduled to be repealed on January 1, 2029. Records supporting a challenge are obtainable first: 765 ILCS 160/1-30(i) requires the board to produce the recorded declaration, community instruments, rules and regulations and board minutes for examination and copying, treats a failure to respond within 30 days as a denial, and entitles a prevailing member to reasonable attorney's fees and costs when the court finds the failure was due to acts or omissions of the board.