Right to Charge Law by State: What an HOA Must Allow

The sentence that settles most of these arguments is not in your CC&Rs. It sits in a state statute, and in California — Civil Code §4745(e) — it reads: "If an application is not denied in writing within 60 days from the date of receipt of the application, the application shall be deemed approved, unless that delay is the result of a reasonable request for additional information."

Sixty days. In writing. That is a clock a board cannot quietly run out.

Most owners meet that clause only after a board has already said no, which is exactly the wrong order to read it in. What follows is the reading that belongs first: what six of these statutes actually say, where they stop, and what a state with no such law looks like when you go hunting for one.

None of this is legal advice; I am not a lawyer. Every section below links to the state's own server, and each was read on 18 August 2026. These get amended, and a citation without a date goes stale quietly.

Six statutes, read on 18 August 2026

These are the ones whose text I could open on an official state server that day. A state missing from this table means only that — not that it has no law.

Two of those entries changed recently enough to catch people out.

California's was amended by SB 770, Stats. 2025, ch. 525, effective 1 January 2026. The Legislative Counsel's Digest for that bill says the measure "would delete the requirement that the insurance policy name the association as an additional insured party." A California board template still demanding additional-insured status is therefore quoting a version of §4745 that expired at the end of 2025. Subdivision (f)(4) rewards a second read too: no homeowner liability policy may be required for an existing NEMA standard AC power plug — the ordinary receptacle case.

Washington's section carries the history note 2026 c 96 s 2; 2025 c 119 s 21; 2022 c 27 s 4, so it was enacted in 2022 and amended in each of the two years since. It also holds the one genuine surprise in the set. Under RCW 64.90.513(1)(c), an association of single-family homes, site condominiums, or a planned use development where the units are not immediately adjacent may not require approval at all, unless the station goes on a common element or connects to a common electrical supply. No application, no 60-day clock, nothing to wait for.

Florida's history line runs from ch. 76-222 to ch. 2025-175. The remaining three are older and much quieter. Hawaii's section closes [L 2010, c 186, §1], passed in 2010 and not amended since. Virginia's closes 2020, c. 1012. Maryland's statute-text page prints no history line at all in the view linked above, so the only date I can stand behind there is the day I read it. Read the live text rather than any summary of it, this page included.

"Reasonable restrictions" is the phrase doing all the work

Three of the six use the same formula word for word. California §4745(a), Maryland §11-111.4(b)(2) and Washington RCW 64.90.513(1)(a)(i) all void a covenant that "effectively prohibits or unreasonably restricts" a station. The other three reach for narrower language: Florida's §718.113(8)(a) voids only a prohibition, Hawaii's §196-7.5(a) says no owner "shall be prevented," and Virginia's opens with an escape hatch for the declaration. Every one of them then hands the association back the power to impose reasonable restrictions — which is why that adjective, and not the void clause, is where the argument actually lands.

California and Washington both define it, and define it identically: a reasonable restriction is one that does not significantly increase the cost of the station or significantly decrease its efficiency or specified performance. That is a usable test. An architectural rule about conduit color or a screening enclosure survives it comfortably. A rule capping you at a 15-amp circuit because that is all the board feels like approving is a performance restriction, and you now have statutory language to say so with.

This is where amperage stops being a shopping decision and becomes a legal one. Ask for a 60-amp circuit, get talked down to 20, and the loss in delivered power is measurable and arguable. Before agreeing to a smaller circuit, though, find out whether the difference would even reach your car: 40A vs 48A vs 80A covers the onboard-charger ceiling that makes many downgrades harmless and a few of them expensive.

Hawaii adds a restriction pointed the other way, at the association. Under §196-7.5(b), no private entity may assess or charge a homeowner any fees for the placement of a charging system, though it may require reimbursement for the electricity used. Washington's RCW 64.90.513(3)(d) is narrower but similar: no fee for placement, and a processing fee only if the same fee already applies to every architectural modification application.

Hawaii's definition is the most specific in the set. An electric vehicle charging system there means one "designed in compliance with Article 625 of the National Electrical Code" — a named code article written straight into the statute. California §4745(d) points more loosely at the California Building Standards Code, and Washington's definition at RCW 64.90.513(11)(b) names no standard whatsoever. Which rulebook your board gets to cite depends on which of those three drafting habits your legislature had.

The statute wins you permission, then hands you the bill

Read the cost provisions in sequence and the shape is unmistakable. These laws remove the veto. They do not move a dollar.

Three of them spell it out as a list, and the lists are nearly interchangeable. California §4745(f)(2), Maryland §11-111.4(d)(2) and Washington RCW 64.90.513(6) and (8) each put installation cost, the electricity, maintenance and repair, damage to the station or to any unit or common element caused by installing or removing it, removal cost and restoration afterwards on the owner and each successive owner. Florida reaches most of the same list through §718.113(8)(e) and (f), and makes the metered electricity payable by the installing owner "or by his or her successor" at (8)(c). Hawaii binds successive owners too, at §196-7.5(d), but only for equipment placed on a common element or limited common element. Virginia is the outlier: §55.1-1823.1 allocates no costs whatsoever. It requires the lot owner to indemnify the association and leaves the rest to the declaration.

Washington then goes a step past everybody at RCW 64.90.513(8)(f). The owner must remove the station when that is reasonably necessary for inspection, repair, maintenance or replacement of the common element. Your equipment comes off the wall, at your expense, when the garage needs work.

Metering is the clause that quietly decides how the electricity gets paid for. Florida §718.113(8)(c) requires the supply to be "separately metered or metered by an embedded meter." Maryland §11-111.4(d)(1)(ii)3 speaks of "the separately metered electric vehicle recharging equipment." Washington makes the owner pay for the usage and for "the required means to facilitate payment." Whether that meter lives inside your charger, in the wall, or as a line on the association's own bill is a question the statutes assume somebody answered before you applied.

Two states attach teeth. California §4745(j) and Washington RCW 64.90.513(10)(a) both make an association that willfully violates the section liable for actual damages plus a civil penalty not exceeding $1,000. The fee-shifting sits one subdivision along in each — §4745(k) and RCW 64.90.513(10)(b) — and both are drafted as shall be awarded to a prevailing owner rather than may. Florida hands the association a matching weapon in the opposite direction: under §718.113(8)(e) it may enforce payment of your costs through the assessment machinery in s. 718.116.

There is one gift in the set worth knowing about. Florida §718.113(8)(i) grants an implied easement across the common elements both for the installation and for the furnishing of power to it. Maryland §11-111.4(f) instead lets the governing body grant a licence of up to three years, renewable at its discretion, over the common element needed to carry the supply. Same practical problem — getting a wire from a panel to your space — and two very different legal answers to it.

The right usually stops at the edge of your own space

If one misreading wastes months, it is assuming a right-to-charge law entitles you to a charger somewhere in the building.

Virginia is the cleanest illustration and the narrowest statute here. §55.1-1823.1(A) opens with "Except to the extent that the declaration or other recorded governing document provides otherwise" — so in Virginia a declaration drafted to say no still says no. It protects installation "on property owned by the lot owner," and subsection (B) then lets the association prohibit or restrict installation on the common area outright.

California arrives somewhere related by a different road. Under §4745(g), a station for one owner's exclusive use in ordinary common area is authorised only if installation in that owner's own designated space is impossible or unreasonably expensive; where it is, the association enters into a licence agreement for the space. Subsection (i) also permits an association to create a new parking space where none existed before, which is a power most boards do not know they have.

So the first question is not whether your state has a law. It is what exactly the space is that you control. Deeded space, exclusive use common element, board-assigned space, or nothing at all — that answer usually decides your case before the statute gets a turn.

The second question is capacity, and it is the one that turns board meetings technical. A building's spare capacity is established the same way a house's is, from recorded demand rather than a nameplate guess. The method behind NEC 220.87 is what an association's engineer will be working from when somebody asserts that the service is already full.

When the answer is "your state has no such law"

Texas is the example worth knowing, because it gets cited wrongly all the time. Property Code §202.019 does restrain HOAs — over standby electric generators. Reading the section list of Chapter 202 on the Texas Legislative Council's server on 18 August 2026, the chapter runs from 202.001 to 202.024 and covers solar devices, roofing materials, flags, firearms, swimming pool enclosures and security measures. The phrase "electric vehicle" does not appear anywhere in it. Whatever a forum thread told you, that chapter is not a right-to-charge law.

To settle your own state, in this order:

1. Search your state's own code, not a summary, for "electric vehicle charging" inside the chapter that governs condominiums or homeowners' associations. That is where these provisions get bolted on: Maryland's sits in Real Property Title 11, Washington's in RCW 64.90, Virginia's in the Property Owners' Association Act.
2. The Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center laws database is worth a pass, filtered to your state and to Electricity, but treat it as an index and nothing more. Take the citation it hands you and go read that citation on the state's own server.
3. Note the enactment and amendment line at the foot of the section — California's Stats. 2025, Ch. 525, Washington's 2026 c 96, Hawaii's L 2010, c 186. When an association quotes an older reading back at you, that line is the evidence.
4. Then write down the date you read it. Two of the six sections above changed within the last eight months, and one of those changes rewrote the insurance rule that boards quote most often.

Some official servers simply will not answer. Colorado's, Illinois' and Oregon's all refused connections from me on 18 August 2026, which is why no section numbers for them appear in the table — I do not cite statutes I have not read. If yours is among them, try again later, try the legislature's bill-text search instead of the code server, or ask a librarian at a county law library. As it turns out those three states legislated for tenants rather than owners, and their sections are read out in what a lease can and cannot stop — all three off non-state copies, each graded as such in the table there.

And if your state genuinely has nothing, you are negotiating with a board on its own terms, and the honest short-term answer may be charging elsewhere while knowing exactly what that costs — a different skill, laid out in how public charging is priced.

One thing to do this week, whichever column you land in: pull your recorded declaration and read the parking exhibit. Not the rules, not the newsletter, not the resale packet summary — the declaration. Whether your space is deeded, an exclusive use common element, or merely assigned by the board each year is the single fact every statute above turns on, and it is the one fact no amount of reading the statute will tell you.