What the standard requires of a board, item by item

Read the definition as four separate tests, because that is how it will be applied:

• Equally. The same covenant, enforced the same way, regardless of who the owner is.
• Consistently. Not once, and not in a burst after a complaint.
• On all properties subject to the covenant. Every violating property, not the ones that generated a complaint.
• Over at least a 2-year period. A rolling window, and the association has to be able to show it.

The practical consequence is documentary. An association that has let five owners keep recreational vehicles on the street for two years and then fines the sixth has not, by the words of the statute, taken enforcement action on that covenant. Whether the board intended selective enforcement is not part of the test.

Enforcement logs stopped being optional

A board that wants to preserve a covenant now needs a record showing, per covenant, every violation it knew of and what it did about each one, spanning at least two years. The statute's phrase “under whatever method an association uses to enforce covenants” is permissive about the method — a letter, a hearing, a fine, a suit — and unforgiving about the pattern. Choose one method and apply it to everyone.

Two practices worth reviewing in that light:

• Complaint-driven enforcement. Acting only when a neighbour complains produces exactly the uneven record the definition tests for. A periodic sweep, documented, does not.
• Informal forbearance. Quiet accommodations — a longstanding fence, a tolerated shed — are now evidence about the covenant, not about the owner.

The clock it connects to just got shorter

Section 70-17-210(2) ties the abandonment defence to the limitation period in § 27-2-202. That period was cut from eight years to six by Senate Bill 143, Chapter 174 of the 2025 Laws, effective October 1, 2025. So the two 2025 changes run in the same direction: the definition of enforcement action tightened, and the window in which a covenant goes dormant shortened by two years.

One trap in reading the statute

Section 70-17-210 was amended twice in 2025, by two different bills with two different effective dates — HB 147 on May 5 and HB 325 on October 1. The codified history note now reads: “En. Sec. 1, Ch. 665, L. 2023 (revised May 3, 2024); amd. Sec. 1, Ch. 258, L. 2025; amd. Sec. 1, Ch. 423, L. 2025.” The code commissioner merged them. Any printout of § 70-17-210 taken before October 2025 is the wrong statute, and that includes copies sitting in board binders and management templates.³

What HB 147 does not do

It creates no penalty, no cure period, and no duty to enforce. It defines a term used in an owner's defence. An association that enforces evenly is unaffected; an association that does not has lost an argument it used to be able to make.²