This seems adjacent to Chesterton's Fence, though maybe not the canonical form of it.
For anyone not familiar with the term, Chesterton's Fence is the idea that you should understand why a rule exists before trying to remove it or work around it: https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/
Here the issue is not that the rule was removed, but that the code followed the wording while missing the reason the rule existed.
Came here to say this. How can you write an entire article about Chesterton’s Fence without mentioning Chesterton’s Fence?!
Agreed that on first blush it looks like Chesterton's Fence but it may be more of a cargo culting situation.