Help with Formula

We have a formula on a field in the Meetings module 

'required_formula' => 'and(isAfter($date_start,date("2024-03-05")),equal($status,"Cancelled"))',

Please note that formula says date('2024-03-05')

The issue is that this causes an error 

attempt to convert invalid value to date: 2024-03-05

This error occurs in include/Expressions/Expression/Date/DateExpression.php. Our users are in the US and we do not format dates as YYYY-MM-DD. As Sugar allows users to configure dates to their preference, how can we avoid this error message?

The OOTB Sugar Code

public static function parse($date)
    {
        if ($date instanceof DateTime) {
            return $date;
        }

        if (empty($date)) {
            return false;
        }

        //String dates must be in User format.
        if (is_string($date)) {
            $timedate = TimeDate::getInstance();
            if (static::hastime($date)) {
                // have time
                $resdate = $timedate->fromUser($date);
            } else {
                // just date, no time
                $resdate = $timedate->fromUserDate($date);
            }
            if (!$resdate) {
                throw new Exception("attempt to convert invalid value to date: $date");
            }
            return $resdate;
        }
        throw new Exception('attempt to convert invalid non-string value to date');
    }