Overview

A San Diego County HOA has been threatening homeowners with fines for flying the American flag in front of their own homes, and those homeowners have refused to back down. Their fight has now drawn national coverage, days before the country marks its 250th Independence Day, and it raises a question California homeowners ask every summer. Can your HOA actually force you to take down the American flag, or punish you when you don’t?

The answer is a resounding NO.

For an American flag flown on a homeowner’s own property or exclusive use area, the Davis-Stirling Act gives the HOA almost no room to interfere, never mind saying “no.” Indeed, the Davis-Stirling Act even singled out the United States flag by giving it explicit statutory protection, quite separate from and stronger than the rules that govern ordinary non-commercial flags, signs, and banners. The federal Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005 reinforces that protection by barring HOAs nationwide from adopting policies that prevent a homeowner from displaying the U.S. flag on residential property the homeowner owns or controls.

The San Diego HOA’s mistake is one I see constantly when homeowners consult with us at my law firm, MBK Chapman, and it turns on a distinction the HOA at issue in the story itself blurred. An HOA can regulate, and even ban, flags on genuine common area that belongs to the whole community. It can’t limit a homeowner’s display of the American flag on that homeowner’s own property or exclusive use area, except where a restriction is necessary to protect public health or safety. That’s it. HOAs cannot use aesthetics or property values as a means of banning, or even limiting, a homeowner’s right to fly the Stars and Stripes.

And yet, the San Diego HOA featured in the inewsource.com story discussed below conceded that exact rule, and then went on to violate it outright by erroneously claiming that the HOA could still impose restrictions to “protect interests and property values.” No such exception exists. When the inewsource.com reporter asked me about the policy, I said that the HOA was “barking up the wrong tree” and that “the law [was] crystal clear.” I also told the reporter that the homeowners in San Diego County should stand firm and refuse to remove their flags under any circumstances. [You can read the full inewsource.com report by Katie Futterman here: https://inewsource.org/2026/06/29/san-marcos-hoa-american-flag-fine/].

This Fact Sheet breaks down why this San Diego HOA’s flag policy is completely illegal as written, how similar statutory protections extend to other non-commercial flags, and what you should do if your own HOA orders you to take down the American flag.

I just released a podcast episode discussing this particular case. You can watch that episode by clicking here: “Can My California HOA Make Me Take Down My American Flag?”

Key Points

The Davis-Stirling Act treats the American flag differently from every other flag, and that difference decides almost every dispute, such as the one currently playing out in a San Diego County HOA that has gone viral in the last few days. The whole question comes down to a written policy that this HOA, the Ambiance Homeowners Association located in San Marcos, like so many others, refused to respect—the line between the community’s general common area and the property a homeowner actually owns or controls. Get that line right and the rest follows because on your own property or exclusive use common area, your HOA can’t limit your American flag at all unless it proves a genuine public health or safety risk. The points below walk through what Civil Code 4705 protects, how the Ambiance HOA’s own memo sank its own policy, and exactly how to respond if your HOA tells you to take your U.S. flag down.

• The Davis-Stirling Act gives the American flag its own protection that’s stronger than the rule for any other flag. Civil Code 4705 bars every one of your HOA’s governing documents from limiting or banning your display of the American flag on the property you own or on the exclusive use common area reserved to you. It also blocks your HOA from twisting any document to reach that same result indirectly. The lone exception is a restriction the HOA can show is necessary to protect public health or safety. That’s it. The end result should be quite simple for even the most stubborn HOA board to understand: your HOA starts from a position of almost no authority whenever the flag at issue is the American flag flown on your own property (or on property over which you have exclusive use).
  • An HOA can’t use property values, aesthetics, or “community character” to limit your display of the American flag. These are the rationales that bad HOAs, like the one in San Marcos, reach for once they realize an outright ban won’t hold, and Civil Code 4705 forecloses every one of them. Property values are not a public health or safety concern. Neither is architectural harmony, neighborhood uniformity, or a neighbor who finds the display distasteful. The statute gives the HOA a single, narrow lever, and dressing up a content or aesthetic objection in softer language doesn’t create authority the HOA doesn’t have.
  • The only restriction Civil Code 4705 actually allows is one genuinely necessary to protect public health or safety. That exception exists for real hazards, not for hurt feelings or bare preference. An HOA invoking it must identify a specific, articulable risk, such as a flag installation that physically obstructs an emergency access path. A vague gesture at “safety” with no concrete danger behind it is almost always a content objection wearing a disguise, and you should make your HOA name the actual hazard, because in an ordinary American flag dispute there isn’t one. [When inewsource.com asked me about the Ambiance HOA’s policy, I told the reporter, Katie Futterman, that the HOA was “barking up the wrong tree” and that “the law [was] crystal clear” on the subject. I went on to explain that bad HOAs “count on the fact that homeowners don’t know better and might be scared.” My advice to Amy Cooke, her neighbor, and every California homeowner in their position was simple. “[U]nder no circumstances should [she] remove that flag.”]
• Everything turns on the difference between true common area and your own separate interest or exclusive use common area. General common area belongs to all members collectively, and there your HOA can regulate and even ban flags, signs, and banners outright. This includes the American flag. Your separate interest, on the other hand, is the property you own, and your exclusive use common area is the slice of common area reserved for your use alone, such as a patio, a balcony, or in many communities the entry area or door frame at your unit or garage. Civil Code 4705 protects the American flag in both of those private spaces, not just inside your walls. Pull your CC&Rs and read exactly what they designate as exclusive use common area, because that single definition often decides the entire dispute. [In the San Diego story, the HOA’s own governing documents designated door frames and garage fascia as exclusive use common area, which is precisely where the homeowner, Amy Cooke, flew her flag.]
• The San Diego HOA’s own flag memo stated the correct rule and then violated it one sentence later. The HOA’s published memo conceded that “Associations cannot restrict a homeowner from displaying a flag, sign, or banner in their exclusive use area (patio, balcony, or backyard).” Having admitted that, the memo immediately went on to claim that the HOA could still “make reasonable restrictions on when, where, and how a flag is displayed to protect interests and property values.” That is simply WRONG. Civil Code 4705 contains no “interests and property values” exception. In fact, the opposite is true. HOAs CANNOT impose any restrictions related to where and how a homeowner flies the U.S. flag unless the health and safety of another person or property is genuinely at issue. The memo also leaned on the association attorney’s utterly irrelevant theory that allowing flags would cause “the common area [to] degrade” when nobody was disputing the HOA’s right to control the common area. The sole issue at stake in the controversy involving Amy Cooke and her HOA, Ambiance Homeowners Association, was the homeowner’s right to fly the American flag on her exclusive use common area (specifically, the fascia surrounding her garage door).
• Civil Code 4705 protects a flag made of fabric, cloth, or paper, displayed from a staff, pole, or window. It does not protect a depiction of the flag built from lights, paint, roofing, siding, paving materials, flora, balloons, or other landscaping or decorative components. An HOA may set reasonable rules tied to those material limits, but it can’t twist them into a backdoor ban on an ordinary cloth flag on a pole. As long as your flag fits the statute’s materials, your HOA’s power over the “when, where, and how” of your display is close to nonexistent.
• The federal Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005 reinforces your right nationwide. Although not necessary to protect Amy Cooke’s rights in her dispute with her HOA (Civil Code 4705 is more than enough), federal law also bars condominium, cooperative, and residential real estate management associations from adopting or enforcing any policy that restricts or prevents a member from displaying the United States flag on residential property the member owns or has a right to exclusive possession or use. [The federal Act, however, includes no enforcement mechanism and creates no private right of action, so a California homeowner’s real leverage comes from Civil Code 4705, not the federal statute.]
• Your other non-commercial flags get their own protection under a separate statute. Subject to the limitations expressly contained in Civil Code 4710, the Davis-Stirling Act also protects political, social, religious, and other non-commercial flags, signs, posters, and banners displayed on your separate interest or exclusive use common area. The American flag simply gets the dedicated, stronger protection of Civil Code 4705 layered on top of that broader rule. [I cover the full range of non-commercial flags, from political and pride flags to sports and cause flags, in my Fact Sheet “Can My California HOA Ban a Flag I’m Flying on My Property?”]
• Civil Code 4705 awards attorneys’ fees to the prevailing party, which is the teeth the federal law lacks. If you’re forced to enforce your rights, the Davis-Stirling Act’s American flag statute awards the prevailing party its reasonable attorneys’ fees. That fee-shifting flips the leverage in a flag dispute because an HOA that digs in over a plainly illegal policy, like this one in San Marcos, risks paying not only its own attorneys but yours as well. [For the other ways you can recover fees against an HOA, read my Fact Sheet “When Can You Recover Attorney Fees from Your California HOA? Key Laws Explained.”]
• If your HOA orders you to take down the American flag from your property or exclusive use common area, don’t do it. Start by confirming the flag flies on your separate interest or exclusive use common area, which your CC&Rs define, and that it’s made of fabric, cloth, or paper. Then put the burden back on the HOA in writing by demanding that it identify the specific provision of Civil Code 4705 or your governing documents that authorizes removal or some limitation related to when, how, or where the flag may be displayed, along with the concrete public health or safety risk it claims to rely on. Refuse to accept “property values,” “aesthetics,” “harmony,” or “community character” as a justification, and keep a dated record of every notice, fine, and response. If the HOA fines you anyway, you can pay under protest and pursue reimbursement while you challenge the policy itself, which is exactly the path Amy Cooke signaled she would take.
• If your HOA is trying to force you to take down the American flag, call the HOA attorneys at MBK Chapman. The HOA attorneys at MBK Chapman are California’s most respected homeowner-side HOA lawyers, and they know precisely what Civil Code 4705 permits and forbids HOAs to do.

The Davis-Stirling Act’s protection of homeowner rights to fly the American flag is almost absolute, leaving bad HOAs with almost nowhere to go. On your own property or exclusive use common area, your HOA can’t ban or limit the Stars and Stripes over aesthetics, property values, or a neighbor’s complaint, and the lone exception, a genuine public health or safety risk, almost never materializes in a real-world flag dispute. Amy Cooke, the San Marcos homeowner at the center of a story that has gone national, grasped that, which is why she kept her flag up under threat of fines. This is a remarkably important story precisely because we’re on the eve of this nation’s 250th Independence Day, and the Ambiance HOA thought it wise to try to ban homeowners from flying their U.S. flags.

FAQs

About Michael Kushner

Michael Kushner is a California attorney with over 30 years of experience representing homeowners in disputes with their HOAs. He is widely regarded as California’s leading homeowner-side HOA attorney, and has built one of the state’s most prominent law practices dedicated to holding HOAs accountable under the Davis-Stirling Act and California law.

In addition to his law firm’s work, Michael is a recognized lecturer, author, and the host of the hit HOA HELL podcast, where he provides homeowners living in HOA-governed communities with clear, practical strategies for dealing with bad HOAs. He’s also the author of the best-selling book, HOA HELL | California Homeowners’ Definitive Guide to Beating Bad HOAs, which has become a go-to resource for both homeowners seeking real-world solutions to their HOA disputes, as well as those good HOA board members who are interested in doing a good job.

About MBK Chapman Fact Sheets

Homeowners searching for answers online will often come across articles that appear authoritative, but are actually written as search-engine marketing content rather than by an experienced HOA lawyer. These pieces tend to prioritize keyword density over clarity, accuracy, or legal context, which often leaves homeowners more confused than informed.

At MBK Chapman, our Fact Sheets are part of our HOA Law Library and are written by Michael Kushner, an HOA lawyer with decades of hands-on experience representing California homeowners. In fact, Michael Kushner is the HOA lawyer who pioneered the systems and strategies used by some of California’s most successful homeowner-side HOA law firms.

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