The Clause That Bans Dueling: How HOA Covenants Became Modern Feudal Charters

A friend sent me a PDF of his new community’s governing documents last month—the kind of thing I read for a living, only this time I wasn’t billing anyone. Page 37, under “Prohibited Conduct,” between the ban on above-ground pools and the rule about garage-door color consistency, sat this: “No owner or occupant shall engage in dueling or affray within the community.” I laughed. Then I read it again. The word affray—a common-law term for fighting in public that terrifies the peace—hasn’t appeared in a statute I’ve worked with in a decade. Yet there it was, nestled in a Florida HOA covenant, doing exactly what these documents always do: not preventing sword fights, but declaring who gets to hold a sword at all. The absurdity is the point. Nobody in this subdivision is going to slap a neighbor with a glove and demand satisfaction at dawn. The clause isn’t about dueling. It’s about what dueling represented—two people resolving a dispute directly, outside the sanctioned channels, on roughly equal terms. The covenant bans that. And once you see it, you start seeing the whole HOA structure for what it is: a miniature feudal charter where the board holds the blade, and you hold a list of infractions.

The Lords of the Lawn

I don’t use the feudalism comparison lightly. I’ve spent enough time inside the legal industry to know that metaphors can overheat. But the structural parallels aren’t subtle. In a typical HOA, the board possesses unilateral enforcement power. They don’t need your consent to interpret the covenants; they just need a vote among themselves. They can fine you, place a lien on your house, and ultimately foreclose—all without a judge ever hearing your side unless you sue them first. That’s not a contract between equals. That’s a grant of authority from a superior to an inferior. The covenants read like royal decrees. They dictate the precise shade of beige your shutters must wear. They regulate how many pets you may keep, what kind of vehicle may sit in your driveway, whether you may erect a flagpole, and—in one document I reviewed years ago—whether your window air-conditioning unit may protrude more than two inches from the sill. These aren’t property-value protections in any straightforward sense. A maroon shutter doesn’t tank comps. What these rules protect is the board’s monopoly on deciding what order looks like. And here’s the part that makes the dueling clause land: you can’t fight back. Not really. The covenants almost always contain a provision requiring you to pay the HOA’s legal fees if you challenge a rule and lose. That’s the modern equivalent of a knight’s privilege—if the lord drags you into court, you’re paying for both sides of the joust. Most homeowners just comply. Not because they agree, but because the cost of dissent is a second mortgage.

The Serf’s Bargain

I’m not saying every board member is a petty tyrant. Most are volunteers who genuinely believe they’re protecting property values. Some are. The problem is the structure itself, which concentrates power with almost no friction. I’ve sat in enough conference rooms to know that even well-meaning people drift toward enforcement over restraint when the tools are there. The board doesn’t have to be malicious. It just has to be unaccountable in the moments that matter. Homeowners often sign up for this willingly. They want the pool, the manicured entrance, the assurance that nobody’s parking a boat on the front lawn. That’s the serf’s bargain: you trade a slice of personal agency for the lord’s protection. The dueling clause is the fine print on that trade. It says, We will handle disputes. You will not. The language strips away the pretense that you and the board are on the same level. You’re not a knight. You’re not even a freeman with a grievance. You’re a subject, and your weapon is a politely worded email that the board can ignore for three meetings. I’ve seen the real sword in the HOA office. It’s not a rapier. It’s a stack of lien notices and a quiet relationship with a law firm that handles collections. That’s the enforcement mechanism that backs up the dueling ban. The covenant doesn’t need to threaten violence. It just needs to remind you that direct conflict—the kind where two people stand face-to-face and hash something out—is against the rules. The only permitted channel is the one the board controls.

The Affray of Everyday Life

What’s an affray, anyway? At common law, it’s fighting in a public place to the terror of others. The key word is terror. The law isn’t worried about the fighters; it’s worried about the bystanders. An affray destabilizes the whole community’s sense of safety. An HOA that bans affray is telling you that your personal beef, if it becomes visible, is a threat to the realm. Not because of property damage—that’s covered elsewhere—but because it undermines the board’s narrative of perfect order. I’ve watched disputes between neighbors escalate precisely because the covenants gave them no legitimate outlet. One homeowner thinks the other’s tree is encroaching. The tree-owner disagrees. The covenant doesn’t say, “Talk to each other.” It says, “Submit a complaint to the architectural review committee.” So the complaint becomes a paper trail. The paper trail becomes a fine. The fine becomes a lien. And two people who might have worked something out over a beer are now locked in a proxy war mediated by a board that has no interest in resolution, only compliance. The dueling clause is the logical endpoint of that system. It forbids the one thing that might cut through the bureaucratic tangle: two people looking each other in the eye and saying, “Let’s settle this.” The board doesn’t want settlements. It wants filings.

The Sword in the Office

I’m not calling for the abolition of HOAs. That’s a fantasy. The housing market has wrapped itself around these structures for decades, and unwinding them would require a legislative appetite that doesn’t exist. What I am saying is that we should read the covenants for what they are, not for what they pretend to be. They aren’t neutral rulebooks. They’re grants of power that turn homeowners into petitioners and board members into magistrates. The dueling clause, ridiculous as it sounds, is the most honest line in the whole document. It tells you exactly where you stand. You can’t fight your HOA president. Not because you lack a grievance, but because the system has already declared you a serf, not a knight. The sword is in the office. You’re holding a copy of the bylaws and a stamped envelope. Choose your weapon.