Restricting Search Scope Not Working

For our site, we're separating between "pending" and "approved" articles (different categories). For certain usergroups, we want to restrict any access to "pending" articles using tags.

In CP -> Config -> General -> Bind to Category(es), it seems like this should be possible. But when I save my selections, they are automatically deselected and not applied.

I've worked around this by binding to categories in CP cloud and CP search, and those work fine.

However, if I am reading an article and click a tag, it leads me to a search page that is not restricted in scope.

As far as we can tell the currently released version of Custom Properties for J17 has that feature working properly.
Please see attached screenshot, taken from demo1720.solidsystem.it
We first searched with 'Fair price' tag and we got back 8 results from Food and Wines categories.
We then restricted the search scope (Cp > config > general) to only food categories and we got back 5 results, belonging to Food categories.

The screenshots you sent me are exactly what we want it to do, however the search scope just refuses to save.

Is there any general Joomla configureations or other CP configurations that need to be set for this feature to work properly?

I also attached our screen shots. In the third shot, you can see that it says configuration was saved, but the selections i had made were deselected.

When you change other parameters and save, do you experience the same problem?

No, only that one.

What other information can I provide you? Thanks.