Why this is more than a typographical curiosity

Section 55-618 is the more aggressive of Idaho's two ADU covenant provisions, and the difference matters.

Section 55-3212 makes a covenant unenforceable without the affected owner's written consent. It creates no damages remedy of its own. Section 55-618 declares the covenant void as against public policy and makes any person “attempting to create or enforce” it liable for the other party's attorney's fees, court costs and damages. For a volunteer board, that is a materially different exposure — and it attaches to the attempt, not to the outcome.

Two questions follow from the deletion, and neither has an Idaho answer yet:

• Does § 55-618 still have a scope? Idaho courts construe a statute by its plain language and give effect to all its words. A reference to a definition that has been repealed is not obviously curable by reading in the new § 67-6541 definition, which is broader — it covers detached units, drops the owner-occupancy element, and drops the thirty-day rental element.
• Or does it carry the old definition forward? The competing reading is that § 55-618 incorporates the definition as it stood, so the fee-shifting provision continues to reach only the narrow internal unit the 2023 Legislature described. That is the more conservative reading and the one that preserves the section's original bargain.

The gap between those two readings is the difference between a fee-shifting statute that reaches detached backyard cottages and one that does not.

The bill that would have fixed it — and died

Idaho's other 2026 ADU bill saw the problem and solved it. Senate Bill 1277 would have amended § 55-618 in the same act, repointing it from § 55-3212 to § 67-6541, broadening it from “prohibits an internal” unit to “prohibits or unreasonably restricts” accessory dwelling units generally, and moving its trigger date from 1 July 2023 to 1 July 2026.⁵

SB 1277 was introduced on 11 February 2026, referred to Senate Commerce & Human Resources on 12 February, and never moved again.⁶ The bill that passed instead, SB 1354, amended only § 55-3212 and added § 67-6541. Section 55-618 was left where it was.

Because Idaho bills do not carry over between sessions, a repair would need a new bill in 2027.

What boards and managers can do

1. Treat § 55-618 as live. It is on the books, unrepealed, with its fee-shifting sentence intact. The cross-reference problem is an argument, not a defence you can count on.
2. Know your covenant's date. Section 55-618 reaches covenants “entered into” on or after 1 July 2023 and expressly exempts earlier ones. Many Idaho declarations long predate that. Amendments and newly recorded declarations do not.
3. Be careful about the word “attempting.” The liability sentence is triggered by an attempt to create or enforce. A demand letter is an attempt. So is a violation notice.
4. Get advice before enforcing an ADU restriction in a post-2023 declaration. Between § 55-3212's consent rule and § 55-618's fee shifting, an enforcement action on this subject now runs through two statutes and one unresolved cross-reference.
5. Do not conflate the two sections. Section 55-618 applies to restrictive covenants generally, not only to those adopted by a homeowner's association — it sits in Chapter 6, not Chapter 32.

What to watch next

Whether the 2027 Legislature files a cleanup bill, whether the Idaho Code Commission's next revision notes flag the reference, and whether any litigant raises it first. Statutory-construction questions of this kind usually surface when a fee award is on the line.