diff --git a/mx.py b/mx.py
index 361e4d6c..869158c9 100755
--- a/mx.py
+++ b/mx.py
@@ -18831,7 +18831,7 @@ def alarm_handler(signum, frame):
         abort(1, killsig=signal.SIGINT)
 
 # The version must be updated for every PR (checked in CI) and the comment should reflect the PR's issue
-version = VersionSpec("6.51.0")  # GR-49282 mx cmake features and tar.bz2 support
+version = VersionSpec("6.51.1")  # GR-47806 Code owners: fix toml module use
 
 _mx_start_datetime = datetime.utcnow()
 _last_timestamp = _mx_start_datetime
diff --git a/mx_codeowners.py b/mx_codeowners.py
index e4cfafde..a91d0dca 100644
--- a/mx_codeowners.py
+++ b/mx_codeowners.py
@@ -55,7 +55,10 @@ def _load_toml_from_fd(fd):
     try:
         import toml
         try:
-            return toml.load(fd)
+            # This is kind of confusing because tomllib expects 'rb',
+            # toml expects 'rt' mode when reading from a file and for
+            # mx_stoml we also decode from UTF-8 ourselves explicitly.
+            return toml.loads(fd.read().decode('utf-8'))
         except toml.TomlDecodeError as e:
             raise _TomlParsingException(e)
     except ImportError: