Dumb state laws still on the books are not internet folklore in every case: real statutes criminalizing public swearing in Mississippi, blasphemy in Massachusetts, adultery in Michigan, bear wrestling in Oklahoma, and serving margarine without a request in Wisconsin are sitting in official codes right now, complete with fines and jail time that could, in theory, apply. The reason they survive is boring: repealing a law takes the same legislative effort as passing one, and no legislator wants to spend a session arguing for the right to eat fried chicken with a fork.
Why Archaic Statutes Never Get Repealed
A bill to strike an old law has to be introduced, debated, passed by both chambers, and signed by the governor. That’s real floor time, and there’s a faint political cost too — voting to repeal an anti-adultery statute hands opponents an easy attack ad, however silly the context. So the statutes stay.
Legal scholars call these provisions dead letter laws. A related doctrine, desuetude, holds that prolonged non-enforcement of a criminal statute can bar future prosecution under it. A few courts recognize the principle; most jurisdictions don’t formally adopt it. The practical result is hundreds of archaic provisions surviving on inertia alone, neither enforced nor removed.
Profanity and Blasphemy Statutes
Mississippi’s code makes it a crime to swear or use vulgar language in any public place when two or more people are present. Conviction carries a fine of up to $100 or up to 30 days in the county jail.1Justia. Mississippi Code 97-29-47 – Profanity or Drunkenness in Public Place The $100 cap has never been adjusted, which gives you a sense of how often the legislature revisits it.
Massachusetts still criminalizes blasphemy. The statute punishes anyone who “wilfully blaspheme[s] the holy name of God” by cursing or reproaching God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, or the scriptures, with up to one year in jail or a $300 fine.2Justia. Massachusetts General Laws Part 4 272-36 – Blasphemy Similar blasphemy provisions remain in South Carolina, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming. None are enforceable in practice; federal courts have treated blasphemy prosecutions as First Amendment violations. The statutes themselves have simply never been repealed.
Blue laws are the commercial version of the same impulse. The remaining restrictions vary by state: some limit Sunday alcohol sales to specific hours, others restrict particular beverage types, and a few still bar car dealerships from opening on Sundays. The trend has been toward repeal, but motor vehicle sales and alcohol restrictions have been the stubborn categories.
Adultery and Dueling
Roughly 15 states still criminalize adultery, and in three of them — Michigan, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin — it is a felony. Michigan’s statute states plainly that anyone who commits adultery “shall be guilty of a felony.”3Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 750.30 The other states treating it as a crime classify the offense as a misdemeanor. Civilian prosecutions are essentially unheard of. The military is the one setting where adultery charges still carry weight; an Air Force general pleaded guilty to adultery during a 2024 court-martial.
Dueling clauses survive in several state constitutions, including Kentucky, Arkansas, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. These provisions bar anyone who has participated in a duel from holding public office, and Kentucky’s oath of office still requires incoming officials to swear they have never fought a duel with deadly weapons. In the early 1800s, political dueling was a genuine threat to governmental stability. Today the oath mostly produces smiles at swearing-in ceremonies.
Animal Laws That Sound Invented
Oklahoma’s bear wrestling ban is real. The statute prohibits promoting, participating in, or being employed at a bear wrestling exhibition, and it also bans selling, purchasing, or training a bear for that purpose. The offense is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in county jail, a fine of up to $2,000, or both.4Justia. Oklahoma Code 21-1700 – Bear Wrestling – Horse Tripping The same section covers horse tripping events, which tells you what Oklahoma legislators were actually looking at when they wrote it.
Sasquatch has local protection in Washington. Skamania County passed an ordinance in 1969 making it a felony to kill one, with penalties of up to $10,000 and five years in jail; the county revised the ordinance in 1984 but kept the protections. Whatcom County went further and declared itself a Sasquatch protection and refuge area. These are county ordinances rather than state statutes, but they’re real local law.
Michigan prohibits selling baby chicks, rabbits, or ducklings that have been dyed or artificially colored.5Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 752.91 – Sale of Artificially Colored Baby Chicks, Rabbits or Ducklings It sounds silly until you learn why: dyed chicks were a popular Easter novelty, and the animals frequently died from the chemicals or from neglect after the holiday. The statute is a straightforward animal welfare provision wearing goofy clothes. A lot of “dumb laws” fall into that pattern.
Food Laws With Industry Backstories
Wisconsin spent 72 years banning yellow-colored margarine outright, starting in 1895, to protect dairy farmers. Governor Warren Knowles signed the repeal in 1967. One piece of that regime survived: Wisconsin still prohibits restaurants and public institutions from serving margarine as a substitute for table butter unless the customer specifically requests it.6Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Code 97.18 – Oleomargarine Regulations A first offense carries up to a $500 fine and three months in jail, escalating to up to a year for repeat violations. Whether any restaurant has been prosecuted under it in recent memory is another matter.
Gainesville, Georgia, which calls itself the Poultry Capital of the World, reportedly passed a 1961 ordinance making it illegal to eat fried chicken with anything other than your hands. The law was a publicity stunt from day one, written to generate press for the city’s poultry industry, and it worked: more than sixty years later, it still appears in every “weird laws” roundup. Whether it technically remains in the municipal code is less clear than most sources suggest, but its origin as marketing rather than governance is well documented.
Masking Laws Are the Exception
Most entries on any dumb-law list are harmless curiosities. Anti-masking statutes are not. At least 23 states and Washington, D.C., restrict wearing face coverings in public, and many of these laws date to the mid-20th century, originally aimed at Ku Klux Klan activity. Alabama’s 1949 statute makes it an offense to loiter or congregate in a public place while masked, with carve-outs for masquerade parties, religious parades, and athletic events.
Florida’s version prohibits anyone over 16 from appearing on any public road, sidewalk, or alley while wearing a mask or hood that conceals their identity.7Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 876.12 – Wearing Mask, Hood, or Other Device on Public Way What separates these from the rest of the list is that legislators have been updating and expanding them, sometimes in response to masked protesters. The statutes sit at the intersection of public safety and First Amendment rights, and they carry real consequences. This is not dead letter territory.
How to Tell a Real Dumb Law From an Internet Myth
A fair share of the “weird laws” circulating online have no verifiable basis in any statute or ordinance. The claim that it’s illegal to walk backwards after sunset in a Connecticut town is probably the most-repeated example, but no one has produced the ordinance. Investigative reporting has found no legislature in Connecticut or in the town of Devon that enacted such a rule, and no source can date it or explain its origins. Widely shared claims about bans on carrying lunchboxes in public or driving while blindfolded fall into the same bucket. They sound plausible enough to share, and they don’t correspond to real statutes.
The pattern is easy to spot once you know it. Real archaic laws almost always have a traceable statute number, an identifiable legislative history, and a problem they were written to solve, however odd the problem looks now. Dyed baby chicks were genuinely dying. Bear wrestling was genuinely happening. Margarine was genuinely threatening the Wisconsin dairy industry. The laws that can’t point to a specific code section or a real-world problem are usually folklore that took on a life of its own. Before repeating any dumb law, check whether anyone can actually cite the statute. If the best source is a listicle with no legal reference, you’re probably looking at a myth.