Steps to reproduce: 

1. Set the setting maxsections to 10 . 
2. Create a course with 10 sections. 
3. Lower the setting maxsections to 5. 
4. Add a label activity to section 1. This will succed . 
5. And a label activity to section 10 . The following error will be thrown: "Cannot create new section as it would exceed the maximum number of sections allowed for this course (5)".

This is not the expected behavoir since this is inconsistant between step 4 and step 5. 

Since the number of sections is not increased it should be allowed to add activities.