diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 727ad6413d..447241187f 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 4.0
-
+ * Reject invalid replication settings when creating or altering a keyspace (CASSANDRA-12681)
 
 3.10
  * cdc column addition still breaks schema migration tasks (CASSANDRA-12697)
@@ -95,7 +95,6 @@ Merged from 3.0:
  * Calculate last compacted key on startup (CASSANDRA-6216)
  * Add schema to snapshot manifest, add USING TIMESTAMP clause to ALTER TABLE statements (CASSANDRA-7190)
  * If CF has no clustering columns, any row cache is full partition cache (CASSANDRA-12499)
- * Reject invalid replication settings when creating or altering a keyspace (CASSANDRA-12681)
 Merged from 2.2:
  * Fix merkle tree depth calculation (CASSANDRA-12580)
  * Make Collections deserialization more robust (CASSANDRA-12618)
diff --git a/NEWS.txt b/NEWS.txt
index e1e952bd7a..9db425a3f0 100644
--- a/NEWS.txt
+++ b/NEWS.txt
@@ -21,7 +21,10 @@ New features
 
 Upgrading
 ---------
-
+    - Cassandra will no longer allow invalid keyspace replication options, such as invalid datacenter names for
+      NetworkTopologyStrategy. Operators MUST add new nodes to a datacenter before they can set set ALTER or 
+      CREATE keyspace replication policies using that datacenter. Existing keyspaces will continue to operate, 
+      but CREATE and ALTER will validate that all datacenters specified exist in the cluster. 
 
 3.10
 ====
@@ -108,9 +111,6 @@ Upgrading
     - Application layer keep-alives were added to the streaming protocol to prevent idle incoming connections from
       timing out and failing the stream session (CASSANDRA-11839). This effectively deprecates the streaming_socket_timeout_in_ms
       property in favor of streaming_keep_alive_period_in_secs. See cassandra.yaml for more details about this property.
-    - Cassandra will no longer allow invalid keyspace replication options, such as invalid datacenter names for
-      NetworkTopologyStrategy. Existing keyspaces will continue to operate, but CREATE and ALTER will validate that
-      all datacenters specified exist in the cluster. 
 
 3.8
 ===