HTTP ERROR 500

Good day

I am unable to login into the /wp-admin of my website. When I do I get the following Error:

This page isn’t working
domainname.com is currently unable to handle this request.
HTTP ERROR 500

I had a look at my error logs and the following error keeps on recurring:
mod_fcgid: stderr: PHP Fatal error: Can’t use function return value in write context in /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/domainname.com/wp-content/themes/enfold/includes/helper-post-format.php on line 213

I then looked into helper-post-format.php and commented line 213 out.
$hide_featured_image = empty( get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), ‘_avia_hide_featured_image’, true ) ) ? false : true;

This seemed to fix the problem as I am now able to access wp-admin again.

My question is how do I permanently fix the issue? What are the implications of removing that line of code? Will it affect anything?