For several years at the Arizona Legislature bills with a very limited restatement, or reminder, that civil government controls public streets were proposed. Each year they were defeated by the special interests — read that to include the HOA boards acting as representatives not of the homeowners, but of the legal fictitious person, the HOA.
This year we see Arizona’s CAI LAC co-chair Scott Carpenter writing in his Arizona Legislative Session blog – surrounded by his firm’s advertising, links and buttons to pay fines, but speaking for himself, says he – about intrusions into the government of the independent HOA principalities. He objects to Sen. Harper’s HB 2140, a bill to prohibit HOAs from denying homeowners their second amendment rights to carry arms, or more correctly, from prohibiting HOA interference with all those rights protected under Article II of the Arizona Constitution. Article II is Arizona’s Declaration of Rights, the state’s version of the Bill of Rights, which all states have in one form or another.
Carpenter’s law firm had also fought to have the statutes providing for an independent tribunal to hear HOA disputes by DFBLS/OAH, which provided due process protections with fair and just hearings, declared in violation of the Arizona Constitution. He now stands in opposition to and objects to the recourse to the Arizona Constitution to protect all the rights of homeowners. Apparently he sees the Constitution as working solely on behalf of the HOA principality, but not for the homeowner— as it secedes from our constitution and from our system of democratic governance. Welcome to the New America of HOA-Lands.
Carpenter continues his plunge into the secession from local government by HOAs, echoing as Robert H. Nelson discussed in Chapter 20, “Neighborhood Secession”, Private Neighborhoods: the transformation of local government (Urban Inst. Press 2005), while seeking the protection of the Arizona courts to enforce the HOA “constitution.” (Interestingly, Private Neighborhoods references this writer’s 2000 statement to the Arizona Legislature on a Homeowners Bill of Rights, p. 102). Carpenter cannot have it both ways! He cannot deny constitutional protections for homeowners and then seek those protections for the HOA! Such a position would be a repudiation of what this country stands for, and his oath to support the Constitution that he took when he was admitted to the State Bar: “The Oath of Admission to the Bar: I, (state your name), do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Arizona;”
What a sad state this country has come to when the legitimate political government of the state must reassert itself as the supreme law of the land.
Congratulations to Sen. Harper for this long awaited bill in support of the people.
HOA Constitutional Government 
Notwithstanding HB 2140’s short title, ‘firearms regulation; landlords; homeowners’ associations,” the significance of Rep. Harper’s proposed legislation, “…an association shall not prohibit the lawful exercise of any fundamental right guaranteed under Article II, Constitution of Arizona,” deserves the support of all legislators in the Fiftieth Legislature and all homeowners across the state.
The continuing transparent hypocrisy of those (self-interested “stakeholders”) that hold themselves out to be the champions of making communities better is once again demonstrated by their unconscionable affirmation, “…constitution does not apply to planned communities currently (sic)…extending constitutional protections will have significant consequences (sic),” should trouble all Arizona’s citizens and should compel every legislator to act in furtherance of each citizen’s Declaration of Rights.