The law that actually governs, and the misconception it corrects

Because both bills failed, the position in Montana is unchanged: a validly adopted amendment to a declaration can bind an owner who bought before it and voted against it, to the extent the declaration's own amendment provisions allow. There is no statutory grandfather clause for use restrictions.

What limits do exist come from elsewhere, and they are narrower than these bills would have been:

• § 70-17-901, the more-onerous-use-restriction protection, as enacted by SB 300 in 2019 (effective May 9, 2019). It was not amended in 2025 — HB 761 was the attempt, and the 2019 text stands.²
• § 70-17-210, the covenant enforcement and abandonment section, as amended by SB 247 (2023) and twice more in 2025 by HB 147 and HB 325.

Boards amending covenants in Montana therefore work under the pre-2025 framework for retroactivity. Nothing about the vote thresholds or notice requirements in a declaration changed in 2025.

Why this is the likeliest covenant bill to return in 2027

Three signals point the same way, and they are worth reading together:

• It ran in both chambers at once, from two different Republican sponsors. Identical text filed twice is not a one-member project.
• It has a longer history than 2025. Two 2023 measures aimed at the same statute — House Bill 683 and Senate Bill 479 — also failed without enactment. HB 683 would have made covenants expire after five years absent board renewal, and missed the same general-bill transmittal deadline.
• Nothing in the 2025 record suggests a merits rejection. HB 761 cleared committee executive action and a second reading before the calendar caught it. SB 431's withdrawal has no stated reason on the record; consolidating behind HB 761 or SB 400 is a plausible inference and nothing more.

As of today the Legislature's published 2027 bill draft request list — 331 entries — contains no covenant or HOA entry. That list is early and grows until pre-filing, and it does not include committee bills, so its silence is not evidence either way.

What a bill that failed still tells a board

The recording-and-notice mechanism in these bills is the part to understand, because it describes what a future version would cost an association to administer. Under HB 761 and SB 431, an owner's exception would have become a recorded encumbrance on that parcel, notice of which had to reach every other owner in the community. In a subdivision of any size, that produces a patchwork: a covenant enforceable against some parcels and not others, with the distinction sitting in the county records rather than in the association's files.

An association that wanted to keep a uniform scheme under such a statute would have had two options, and both are ordinary governance rather than legal strategy:

• Get written agreement at the time of adoption, which is what the bills' “unless the owner expressly agrees in writing” clause invites — a consent campaign run alongside the amendment vote rather than after it.
• Keep a current owner roll and a record of who was noticed, because under a regime like this the enforceability of a covenant would depend on per-parcel history rather than on the recorded declaration alone.

Neither is required today. Both are cheap now and expensive to reconstruct later, and the second one is useful regardless — the 2025 definition of “enforcement action” in § 70-17-210 already turns on a two-year, per-property enforcement record.