Private events
A wedding reception, a birthday party, a rental to an outside group. The rules that apply to your clubhouse or pool can shift for that one occasion.
A private event, a wedding, a birthday party, a rental to an outside group, can change the rules that apply to your clubhouse or pool for that one occasion. Opening the space to non-members can trigger ADA public accommodation rules, alcohol shifts liability, and a signed waiver may not protect the association as much as the board assumes.
When your clubhouse becomes a public accommodation
Most of the time, the Americans with Disabilities Act's accessibility rules for pools and clubhouses don't reach your amenities at all. Title III of the ADA applies to a "public accommodation," a facility open to the general public, and a clubhouse or pool limited to owners, residents, and their guests generally sits outside that category.
That can change for a single event. Renting the clubhouse to an outside group, using it as a polling place, or inviting the general public to something held there can convert that specific use, for that occasion, into a public accommodation subject to Title III, even though the same room is exempt every other day of the year. A resident's private party for their own guest list is a different situation than an event advertised or opened to non-residents, and the board should not assume one blanket answer covers both.
"Title III of the ADA requires that places of public accommodation (e.g., hotels, resorts, swim clubs, and sites of events open to the public) remove physical barriers in existing pools."
Source: ADA Requirements: Accessible Pools, Means of Entry and Exit, U.S. Department of Justice
Alcohol turns you into a host, not a bar
When your association serves or allows alcohol at a private event, it is generally acting as a social host rather than a business selling drinks under a liquor license. That distinction matters because dram shop laws, the statutes that let an injured third party sue whoever served a visibly intoxicated patron, are aimed at licensed sellers profiting from alcohol sales. A social host usually sits outside that framework, with one notable exception: serving a minor can still bring criminal and civil exposure regardless of whether money changed hands.
Whether a specific event needs a state liquor permit, and what counts as "furnishing" alcohol when nothing is sold, depends on your state's alcohol beverage control agency. Check with that agency before any event goes beyond a small private gathering in a member's own reserved space.
A signed waiver is not a force field
Hosts renting the clubhouse or pool deck often ask attendees to sign a liability waiver, sometimes called an exculpatory agreement, before the event. A waiver can lower the association's exposure from ordinary negligence to a higher bar, but in most states it cannot excuse gross negligence, recklessness, or intentional wrongdoing. If children are attending, the gap is wider still: in most courts that have considered the question, a parent's signature cannot waive away the child's own future claim for an injury caused by someone else's negligence.
Whether your state enforces a waiver against a minor's claim at all, and exactly where the ordinary-negligence line falls, is a question for waiver language drafted by counsel licensed in your own state, not a form copied from another community.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
A resident books the clubhouse for a wedding reception and posts the event publicly, drawing guests who are not community members or their invitees. What happens to ADA Title III?
The board hosts a free holiday party and pours wine for members and their guests, no license, no admission charge. A visibly intoxicated adult guest later causes an accident. Under the general liability pattern, is the association exposed under dram shop law?
A family reserves the pool deck for a birthday party, and the parent signs a standard liability waiver covering all attending children. One child is later injured due to the association's alleged negligence. What is generally true about that waiver?
- ADA Requirements: Accessible Pools, Means of Entry and Exit, U.S. Department of Justice
- Commentary on ADA Title III applicability to private residential clubhouses and pools, HOA Law Blog; Tarley Robinson, P.L.C.
- Commentary on dram shop and social host liability, InjuryClaimCoach; Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers
- Exculpatory Agreements and Liability Waivers In All 50 States, MWL Law
- Commentary on enforceability of liability waivers signed on behalf of minors, Reminger Co., L.P.A.; Collins & Lacy, P.C.
Amenities
Renting out amenities more than once in a while? See how amenity risk management ties these pieces together.
Whether a specific private event turns your clubhouse or pool into an ADA public accommodation, whether your state requires a liquor permit for that event, and whether a signed waiver holds up for adult or minor guests all vary by state and by the facts of the event.