The trade-off this puts in front of every Kentucky drafting committee

Read against the rest of Kentucky's recent covenant law, Strunk completes a picture that is genuinely useful, and slightly uncomfortable.

In August 2025 the Court of Appeals upheld a board's refusal of a six-foot fence in a community whose declaration simply required board approval for any fence or structure, even though roughly eighteen of 151 homes already had six-foot fences and nothing in the documents specifically prohibited them. The court was explicit that to categorically forbid six-foot fences the governing documents would have to be amended — but that owners were nonetheless restricted from building without approval first.

So: a bare approval requirement is enforceable and preserves discretion. A detailed standard is enforceable and spends it.

That is a real choice, and most Kentucky declarations were not drafted with it in mind. Communities that responded to disputes by writing ever more specific guidelines — permitted roof pitches, an approved paint palette, setback tables — were, without knowing it, converting discretionary review into compliance checking.

How to keep both, if you want both

The route the opinions leave open is to say expressly that the specifics are a floor rather than a ceiling. Language that gives the committee authority to consider harmony, compatibility or overall appearance in addition to the enumerated standards, and says so, is not the general clause Strunk refused to let swallow the detail — it is a standard of its own.

What that means for a Kentucky board:

• Read your own document for the collision. Find every enumerated standard, then find the approval clause, and ask which one your last three denials actually rested on. If a denial rested on the approval clause alone while the plans met every enumerated standard, Strunk describes it.
• Colour is the classic exposure. An approved palette is a specific standard; “the committee may consider colour” is not the same thing as a palette, and refusing a colour that no document restricts is where this case started.
• Say why, in the denial. A written denial that cites the provision relied on, and explains how the plans fail it, is the difference between a reasoned decision and an arbitrary one. Where no provision is cited, arbitrary is the available characterisation.
• Amend rather than stretch. If the community genuinely wants a rule, adopt it through the declaration's amendment procedure — KRS 381.791 for a planned community, KRS 381.9155 for a condominium. Kentucky's own 2026 case law shows a properly adopted amendment is powerful: in April 2026 the Court of Appeals held that pre-amendment non-compliance elsewhere in the subdivision was immaterial to enforcing a newly adopted architectural standard.

What the decision does not say

Three limits, because a decision ordering approval of plans invites over-reading by owners.

It does not hold that architectural review is unenforceable, or that a committee must approve anything an owner submits. It does not disturb the rule that an approval requirement standing alone is a valid restriction. And it does not create a general reasonableness review of every design decision — the finding was that the plans plainly conformed to specific and unambiguous covenants. Where a standard is genuinely ambiguous, or where the plans do not meet it, Strunk does not reach.

It is also unpublished, and so under the Rules of Appellate Procedure is not binding and may be cited only in limited circumstances.

What to watch next

Kentucky has no published appellate decision resolving the interaction between a general approval clause and detailed enumerated standards. Two unpublished opinions eleven months apart now point in opposite-seeming directions on very similar clauses, and the distinction between them — how specific the written standards were — is doing all the work.

Until a published decision settles it, the safest assumption for a Kentucky board is the narrower one: you have the discretion your document reserves in terms, and no more.