diff --git a/api-ref/source/servers.inc b/api-ref/source/servers.inc
index f80ad59912..466185af9e 100644
--- a/api-ref/source/servers.inc
+++ b/api-ref/source/servers.inc
@@ -156,7 +156,6 @@ whitelist will be silently ignored.
 - For non-admin users, whitelist is different from admin users whitelist.
   Valid whitelist for non-admin users includes
 
-  - ``all_tenants``
   - ``changes-since``
   - ``flavor``
   - ``image``
diff --git a/nova/api/openstack/compute/servers.py b/nova/api/openstack/compute/servers.py
index a85fc50f17..f5db67933d 100644
--- a/nova/api/openstack/compute/servers.py
+++ b/nova/api/openstack/compute/servers.py
@@ -1212,6 +1212,11 @@ class ServersController(wsgi.Controller):
 
     def _get_server_search_options(self, req):
         """Return server search options allowed by non-admin."""
+        # NOTE(mriedem): all_tenants is admin-only by default but because of
+        # tight-coupling between this method, the remove_invalid_options method
+        # and how _get_servers uses them, we include all_tenants here but it
+        # will be removed later for non-admins. Fixing this would be nice but
+        # probably not trivial.
         opt_list = ('reservation_id', 'name', 'status', 'image', 'flavor',
                     'ip', 'changes-since', 'all_tenants')
         if api_version_request.is_supported(req, min_version='2.5'):