Non Sequitur
logical fallacies

"Non sequitur" means literally "it does not follow". My personal use of this term is to refer to fallacies in which one or more premises are irrelevant to an inference, and the inference is in fact arbitrary. This is a broad class of fallacies with many specializations, such as Ad Hominem, but in many cases it is the most appropriate name for an invalid inference that lacks distinctive special characterization.

Most but not all other sources recognize Non Sequitur as a logical fallacy, and most are likely to describe it somewhat differently. It may in fact not be the same fallacy if different definitions are given rigorous mathematical descriptions. My particular definition, referring to irrelevant premises,  uses the term to help organize a major subset of fallacies.

Predicate 1:
 A circumstance irrelevant to the conclusion is asserted (to be true).
More predicates:
Additional circumstances may be asserted. These may or may not be relevant to the final conclusion.
Therefore
 A conclusion is asserted. (The conclusion is arbitrary)

Examples:

The El Dorado Hills Community Services District performs both architectural design review processes and CC&R enforcement processes for most housing developments in El Dorado Hills. It adopted a policy to deny architectural review approval when the applicant (homeowner) has an outanding unresolved CC&R violation. This is a deliberately coercive measure intended to facilitate CC&R enforcement. Stated simply:
Predicate:    An design review applicant has an outstanding CC&R violation
Therefore:    The application must be denied, regardless of validity of the application
In contrast, principles of common law (tort negligence theories) and of a key statute in state law require reasonableness. While legal criteria for reasonableness are relatively imprecise in law and tend to be collected through a body of case law precedents, the key point is the word "reason":  Can the conclusion be inferred from its premises?

Unless an individual CC&R document authorizes such linkage, other law indicates that there is an equal duty to approve and to disapprove applications for architectural changes, depending only on whether the planned work does or does not conform to CC&R requirements. An alternative statement is:
If the work described in a design review application is legal (authorized by CC&Rs)
    then the application is to be approved
    else (the work is not legal) the application is to be denied
An independent CC&R violation is irrelevant to whether a design review application should be approved, and the conclusion that a violation should trigger denial of the application is arbitrary.

This scenario was brought to public attention by two well-publicized "yellow house" cases. In the first case an application to reroof a house was denied because the house was considered to be an illegal color (yellow). In the second case an application to paint a house yellow was denied because the property had a white picket fence that reportedly was not permitted by the neighborhood's CC&Rs. In the second case the owners sued the CSD and a judge found in favor of the owners, ruling that linkage of design approval with independent CC&R violations is illegal.