## Facts

- Twin Rivers is a large planned common-interest residential community in East Windsor, New Jersey, with about 10,000 residents and extensive common property.
- The Twin Rivers Homeowners’ Association (TRHA), through a related trust, administered and enforced restrictive covenants and community rules.
- Residents organized as the Committee for a Better Twin Rivers (CBTR) and challenged several TRHA policies as burdening dissenting expression.
- TRHA’s sign policy limited the location, size, and number of signs residents could display on their property, including political signs, and distinguished between window signs and other placements.
- CBTR alleged unequal or burdensome terms for using a community room compared with other groups.
- CBTR alleged limited access to, or disparate rates for, the association newsletter, which residents used for community-related debate.
- Plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief, claiming the policies violated New Jersey constitutional free-speech and assembly protections.
- The trial court granted summary judgment for TRHA, finding the association’s rules not subject to state constitutional free-speech constraints.
- The Appellate Division reversed in substantial part, concluding residents’ state constitutional expressive rights constrained TRHA’s regulation.
- The New Jersey Supreme Court granted review and reversed the Appellate Division.

## Issues

1. Whether New Jersey constitutional free-speech and assembly guarantees constrain a private homeowners’ association’s rules governing resident signs, community room use, and newsletter access.
2. If those guarantees apply in this setting, whether the challenged policies are permissible under the Schmid/Coalition multi-factor test.

## Decision

- The New Jersey Supreme Court reversed the Appellate Division and reinstated judgment for TRHA.
- The Court held TRHA’s sign, community room, and newsletter policies did not violate the New Jersey Constitution’s free-expression guarantees.
- Applying the Schmid/Coalition factors, the Court treated Twin Rivers as a hybrid private-residential setting where contractual expectations and private-property interests carry substantial weight.
- The Court concluded the rules were reasonable regulations of time, place, and manner in a private community rather than unconstitutional suppression of resident expression.

## Legal Principles

- State constitutional free-expression limits may apply to private property owners only after contextual analysis under the Schmid/Coalition test: (1) nature and primary use of the property, (2) extent of the public invitation, and (3) relationship of the expressive activity to the property’s private and public uses.
- Common-interest communities are generally private, covenant-based arrangements; residents may voluntarily curtail certain expressive freedoms by purchasing property subject to recorded restrictions.
- A private residential community, even if open and performing some quasi-governmental functions, is not treated like a traditional public forum or a shopping center broadly inviting the public.
- Reasonable restrictions on resident speech within a private association (including aesthetics- and property-value-related sign limits and association control over internal facilities and publications) ordinarily are addressed through contract and association-governance doctrines rather than constitutional adjudication, absent extreme exclusionary practices.

## Conclusion

The court held that, in a private common-interest residential community, residents’ state constitutional expressive rights do not invalidate reasonable HOA rules on signs, access to community facilities, and an association newsletter when the Schmid/Coalition factors and the parties’ contractual expectations favor the association’s control over its property and internal operations.


Comm. for a Better Twin Rivers v. Twin Rivers Homeowners' Ass'n, 192 N.J. 344, 929 A.2d 1060 (N.J. 2007)