Rules that have become obsolete

"We stopped enforcing it" is not a legal argument

Every board eventually finds a rule nobody remembers agreeing to: a ban on clotheslines, a limit on RV parking that predates the RVs everyone now owns, a design restriction written for a phase of construction that finished decades ago. It is tempting to treat it as dead by neglect and move on.

That instinct skips a step. A restriction stays legally in force until it is repealed through the process your governing documents set out, or until a court finds one of the narrow grounds for refusing to enforce it. Simply deciding, as a board, that a rule feels obsolete does not do either of those things.

Courts set a high bar, and it isn't the board's to clear

Courts are described as reluctant to declare a covenant unenforceable just because the neighborhood has changed since it was written. The reluctance is not a technicality, it protects every owner who bought expecting the declaration to mean what it says. A board that unilaterally treats a rule as "obsolete" and stops enforcing it is substituting its own judgment for a determination that belongs to a court, applying its own procedure, not the board's opinion.

Whether a specific rule you consider outdated would actually meet that bar, and how high the bar is in your state, varies, and it is not something a board can settle on its own. Related doctrine on how ambiguous restrictions get read cuts the same direction: several state courts apply a rule of strict construction, reading unclear covenant language against whoever is trying to enforce it and in favor of free use of the property.

Two paths that actually work

If a rule truly no longer serves the community, there are two lawful ways to deal with it, and "quietly stop mentioning it" is neither of them.

The first is formal amendment or repeal, following whatever process your bylaws or declaration require. The vote threshold for that process is set association by association, and sometimes by state statute, so check your own documents rather than assume a percentage.

The second is prospective enforcement: reviving an unenforced restriction going forward, after telling every owner in writing that past violations will be left alone but future ones will not. A Florida court found this approach acceptable even though the association had let earlier, similar violations stand.

A board that enforces a restriction only from a clear written notice date forward is not engaged in "selective and arbitrary" enforcement, even though it previously let similar violations go unaddressed.

Source: Chattel Shipping & Investment, Inc. v. Brickell Place Condominium Assn., Florida District Court of Appeal

What does not work is enforcing the "obsolete" rule against one owner while continuing to ignore it for everyone else. That is selective enforcement, and it has been used to defeat a restriction entirely against the owner singled out.

Review it before it becomes a problem

The cleanest way to avoid an "is this rule still good?" argument is to not let a rule sit unexamined for years in the first place. At least one state, Colorado, statutorily requires associations to adopt responsible governance policies that include periodic review of their rules and regulations, but this is reported as a Colorado specific requirement, not a general rule.

Outside of a state mandate, periodic review is a good governance habit rather than a legal obligation: a standing item to check whether each rule still matches how the community actually lives, before "we never enforce that" becomes the board's whole defense.