Why re-enacting the statute was not a trivial act

Here is the context that makes two housekeeping bills interesting, and it is not about chickens.

The chickens provision entered Missouri law as subsection 5 of section 442.404, added by House Bill 2062 in 2024. On 20 October 2025 — per the reporting available, though the docket date is not something we were able to confirm from a court record — the Circuit Court of Cole County held that H.B. 2062 violated the Missouri Constitution's clear-title mandate, its single-subject prohibition and its original-purpose directive, plus the Contracts Clause, and decreed that the bill was “invalidated in its entirety.”²

A bill that re-enacts section 442.404 with subsection 5 in it, filed six weeks later, is not a stylistic exercise from the point of view of that litigation. It is a legislative act that would have cured the procedural defect the court identified — because a clear-title, single-subject and original-purpose ruling is an attack on how the bill was assembled, not on whether the legislature may enact the rule. A standalone bill whose title and subject are the homeowners-association restrictions statute has no omnibus problem.

The association lobby read it exactly that way. CAI Heartland's own winter chapter report put it plainly: “Despite the ruling, Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman has pre-filed SB 1059, a new 'Chicken Bill,' which appears to closely mirror the invalidated law.”³

We are not going to assert that either sponsor filed with that purpose — neither bill's official summary says anything about the litigation, and Representative Murphy has filed on this section before, including HB 1514 in 2024. But the effect of enactment would have been the same whatever the motive, and that is the fact a board needs.

What a Missouri board is actually left holding

Three facts, and they do not resolve neatly.

1. The Revisor of Statutes publishes subsection 5 as operative law. We fetched section 442.404 on the day of writing: subsection 5 appears in full, on a version marked effective 28 August 2024 with no end date, with the history line “(L. 2018 H.B. 1887, A.L. 2022 H.B. 1662 merged with S.B. 745 merged with S.B. 820, A.L. 2024 H.B. 2062)” and no note, flag or qualifier of any kind referencing the judgment.⁴
2. A circuit court has invalidated the act that created it, and no appellate court has spoken. The plaintiff side reports the Attorney General filed a notice of appeal limited to an intervention question, and reports no stay. We could not confirm the appellate court, case number, or posture from any court record.
3. The legislature declined to re-enact it. Both cure bills died without a hearing, one in a Senate committee that never scheduled it, one never referred to a committee at all.

So the honest category-level statement is: the provision is printed as law, a trial court has held the act that created it unconstitutional, the legislature has not re-passed it, and no appellate decision resolves the question. That is an unresolved position, and any board acting in this area should get advice on its own covenant and its own facts rather than on a general rule.

Where the same subject went instead

A third 2026 bill took the chickens provision in the opposite direction. HB 2858 (Representative Mike Costlow) would have replaced “up to six chickens” with “non-nuisance animals for personal consumption” — defined to include “chickens, rabbits, and quail” — allowed an enclosure for up to eight animals, and raised the lot-size floor from two-tenths of an acre to one-third of an acre. It also would have barred political subdivisions from prohibiting the same thing. It was never referred to a committee either.

Note the trade in that drafting, because it was not purely an expansion: an owner on a quarter-acre lot is inside the current two-tenths-of-an-acre threshold and would have fallen outside a one-third-acre one.

What to do now

1. Do not enforce, and do not stop enforcing, on the strength of a newsletter. This is the one area in Missouri association law this year where the law as published and the law as adjudicated point different ways. A board's position should rest on written advice about its own recorded restriction, not on a summary.
2. Read the one part of the section that is settled. Subsection 5(2) — unchanged by any of these bills — preserves the association's authority to “adopt reasonable rules, subject to applicable statutes or ordinances, regarding ownership or pasturing of chickens, including a prohibition or restriction on ownership or pasturing of roosters.” Whatever happens to the override, the rooster power was always expressly reserved.
3. Check the local ordinance too. Subsection 5(2) makes the association's rules “subject to applicable statutes or ordinances.” Many Missouri municipalities regulate backyard poultry independently, and a municipal prohibition operates whatever the covenant says.
4. Watch 1 December 2026. Pre-filing for the 2027 session opens that day. A standalone re-enactment of section 442.404, or a fresh chickens bill, is the single most likely Missouri association-law filing of the next cycle — and if one appears, whether it is drafted to survive a single-subject challenge is the thing to read for.

What to watch next

Whether the Revisor's page for section 442.404 ever acquires a note, and whether any appellate court reaches the constitutional holdings rather than only the intervention question. As of today the page carries exactly one case annotation, and it is the 2026 Supreme Court solar decision construing a different subsection.