What this does and does not change

Here is the line that matters, and we are not going to blur it.

What is verifiable: the Arkansas statutory provision that voided these covenants no longer exists. An owner or operator who previously could point to § 20-48-611 and say this covenant has no force in Arkansas can no longer point to anything in the Arkansas Code.

What is not established: that Arkansas associations may now enforce such covenants. The federal Fair Housing Act independently constrains covenant enforcement against housing for people with disabilities — through its prohibition on discrimination because of handicap, its reasonable-accommodation requirement, and the long line of federal cases on municipal and private restrictions aimed at group homes. None of that turns on Arkansas law, and none of it was repealed by Act 850.

So the honest description of the position is: the state-law belt is gone; the federal braces are untouched. Whether the net effect on an Arkansas covenant dispute is large, small or nil is a question no Arkansas court has answered since the repeal, and nothing we found suggests one has been asked to.

Why it still matters to associations

Even taking the federal analysis as unchanged, the repeal changes the shape of the argument in three practical ways.

The clean answer is gone. A statute that says a covenant is void “as against the public policy of this state” is a one-line answer. A Fair Housing Act analysis is a fact-specific inquiry into discriminatory effect, intent and accommodation. Boards, managers and the people who advise them now have to run the harder analysis in every case.

The zoning half is gone too. Repealing § 20-48-604 removed the state guarantee that a family home is a permitted use in every residential zone with no conditional use permit. In a covenanted subdivision the municipal and private layers usually run together — and both state protections came out at once.

Enforcement decisions carry real exposure. An Arkansas board that reads Act 850 as a green light to enforce a covenant against a group home is making a Fair Housing Act bet, not a state-law one. The Arkansas Fair Housing Commission can investigate, hold administrative hearings against, and litigate against an association — it is in fact the only Arkansas state agency with any jurisdiction over an HOA, and its jurisdiction is discrimination. A private federal suit is available alongside it.

That is the most important practical point in this piece: of everything an Arkansas association does, covenant enforcement touching disability is the area where its exposure is most federal and least affected by what the General Assembly does. Act 850 did not change that.

How it passed without anyone noticing

The bill was presented as repealing an obsolete location act, and the Governor's office described it that way in its signing announcement. The covenant provision was one section inside a repealed subchapter, visible only as struck-through text in the enrolled act.

This is worth noting as a pattern rather than a complaint. Arkansas's association-relevant law is scattered across titles — the Horizontal Property Act in Title 18, the Nonprofit Corporation Act in Title 4, improvement districts in Title 14, this provision in Title 20 — and there is no state agency, registry or trade committee whose job is to notice when one of them moves. An exhaustive search of all 1,026 acts of the 2025 regular session turns up the phrase “restrictive covenant” in only two of them, and “bill of assurance” in none at all.

What to watch next

Whether any Arkansas association actually tries to enforce a covenant of this kind, and what happens when it does. Until then the position is: a repealed state protection, an intact federal one, and no Arkansas authority construing the gap between them.

Associations reviewing their use restrictions should treat a covenant that excludes group homes as a federal-law problem regardless of the repeal — and should get advice before acting on one, not after.