Laws that don’t make sense stay on the books because legislatures are built to pass statutes, not clean them up, and a rule stays legally valid until someone with authority formally removes it. That’s the short answer. The longer one matters because an unenforceable-looking law can still generate fines, arrests, and license revocations if an official decides to use it, and the gap between what’s technically illegal and what’s actually prosecuted is wider than most people assume.
Why Odd Laws Survive
Repealing a law takes the same committee hearings, floor votes, and gubernatorial signature as passing one. No legislator builds a career on tidying up old codes, and proposing a repeal can carry unexpected political risk. Voting to strike an anti-cohabitation statute, for example, can produce attack ads even when the law is obviously unenforceable. So the easier path, almost always, is to leave the text alone.
Sunset provisions were designed to fix this by building automatic expiration dates into statutes, so a law dies unless the legislature affirmatively renews it. In practice they’re rare. Only about 11 states include sunset clauses for administrative rules in their procedural codes, and even where sunset review exists, it usually covers regulatory agencies rather than criminal or civil statutes. Nobody thinks to attach a sunset clause to an ordinance banning pigeon feeding or Sunday car sales when it’s first passed.
A few states have created law revision commissions with a standing mandate to review the code and recommend repeals. California’s Law Revision Commission, established in 1953, has seen over 90 percent of its recommendations enacted, affecting more than 22,500 code sections. Most states have no comparable body. In those states, outdated laws survive through pure inertia until a controversy forces action.
Odd Laws That Are Still Enforced
The mistake is treating every strange statute as a dead letter. Several categories are very much alive.
Sunday Blue Laws
Commercial restrictions known as blue laws trace to colonial-era mandates against work and trade on the Christian Sabbath. The Supreme Court settled the constitutional question in 1961 in McGowan v. Maryland, acknowledging the religious origins but upholding them on the ground that they now served the nonreligious purpose of providing a uniform day of rest.1Justia. McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961) That ruling gave legislatures constitutional cover to keep these rules indefinitely.
New Jersey’s ban on Sunday car sales under N.J.S.A. 2A:171-1.1 is one of the better-known examples. A dealer who sells a vehicle on a Sunday faces a fine of up to $100 and up to 10 days in jail for a first offense, escalating to $500 and 30 days for a second violation. The state can also suspend or revoke the dealer’s license. Dealerships in New Jersey genuinely stay closed on Sundays because enforcement is active enough to make the risk not worth it.
Alcohol rules follow the same pattern. Hundreds of counties remain fully or partially dry, and many wet jurisdictions still restrict Sunday sales hours. A violation can mean license suspension or revocation, which is financially devastating for a bar or liquor store.
Local Nuisance and Property Ordinances
San Francisco’s Police Code Section 486 prohibits feeding pigeons on city streets and sidewalks, and violators receive citations and fines. Cities across the country impose maximum grass-height limits, usually between 8 and 12 inches, and send code enforcement officers to measure. A homeowner who lets a lawn grow past the limit typically faces fines of $50 to $500, and in some municipalities the city hires a contractor to mow the yard and bills the owner for the cost plus administrative fees.
Most cities handle these through administrative hearings rather than criminal courts. If you receive a citation, you usually have a short window, often around 15 calendar days, to file a written appeal. Miss that deadline and you waive your right to contest. The hearing officer’s decision carries the same weight as a court judgment, so the city can collect through standard debt collection methods if you don’t pay.
Industry Protection Statutes
Some laws exist to shield established industries from competition. Wisconsin law still prohibits restaurants from serving margarine as a substitute for table butter unless a customer specifically requests it. Iowa makes it a misdemeanor to pass off margarine as real butter under its food labeling rules. These statutes remain enforceable because no one has invested the political capital to remove them.
Odd Laws That Are Dead on Paper Only
Other statutes sit in the code but can no longer be constitutionally enforced. Knowing which category a law falls into matters, because the two look identical when you’re reading the state code.
Statutes Struck Down by the Supreme Court
Sodomy laws are the leading example. By 2003, thirteen states still criminalized private, consensual sexual conduct between adults. In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute criminalizing same-sex intimate conduct, holding that it violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.2Justia. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) That decision rendered every remaining sodomy law in the country unenforceable, yet roughly a dozen states still have these statutes printed in their codes.
Cohabitation laws followed a similar arc. Many states once criminalized unmarried couples living together as “lewd and lascivious conduct.” Legislatures have been repealing them, courts have struck some down, but in states where no one brings a case, the text just sits there.
Statutes Preempted by Federal Law
The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 amended the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with an express preemption clause barring states from setting food labeling requirements that are “not identical to” federal standards.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 21 USC 343-1 National Uniform Nutrition Labeling A state can petition for an exemption, but the default is that federal rules control. Many older state labeling laws are effectively dead even though they were never formally repealed.
Dormant Morality Statutes
Mississippi Code 97-29-47 makes it illegal to “profanely swear or curse, or use vulgar and indecent language” in a public place in the presence of two or more people, with a maximum penalty of a $100 fine or 30 days in the county jail. Arrests under this statute are essentially unheard of today. It hasn’t been formally invalidated, but it hasn’t been seriously used in generations either.
Non-Enforcement Isn’t a Defense
Legal scholars use the term “desuetude” to describe a law that has been ignored so long it arguably loses its binding force. American courts have been reluctant to accept the idea. A handful of state courts have recognized desuetude in narrow circumstances, but there is no broadly accepted rule that a statute becomes invalid just because it hasn’t been enforced in decades. A dormant law is still a law. It can be revived whenever an official chooses to act on it.
What to Do If One of These Laws Is Used Against You
If you’re charged under a statute that seems unconstitutional, the most direct path is to challenge it in the criminal case itself. Argue that it violates the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, or whatever other constitutional provision applies. This is how sodomy laws were ultimately dismantled: someone was charged, fought the charge, and the case eventually reached the Supreme Court.
You don’t always have to wait to be charged. The Federal Declaratory Judgment Act lets a court declare the rights of parties in an “actual controversy” before any injury occurs.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 2201 Creation of Remedy If a statute creates a real and immediate threat to your conduct, say you want to open a business on Sundays in a state that bans it, you can file a declaratory judgment action asking a court to rule the law unconstitutional. The controversy has to be genuine. Courts won’t issue advisory opinions on laws that have no practical effect on you.
When an official actually enforces a law that is plainly unconstitutional, the person targeted can sue for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the federal civil rights statute. It makes any person acting “under color of” state authority liable for depriving someone of their constitutional rights.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1983 Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights Remedies include compensatory damages, punitive damages, and injunctive relief against future enforcement.
The main obstacle is qualified immunity. Government officials are shielded from personal liability unless their conduct violates “clearly established” constitutional rights that a reasonable person would have known about.6Congress.gov. Qualified Immunity in Section 1983 For a novel or untested statute, an officer can argue the unconstitutionality wasn’t clear at the time. For statutes already invalidated by Supreme Court precedent, like sodomy laws after Lawrence, qualified immunity offers no protection. That’s where most of these cases have real bite: not the existence of the bad law, but the decision of some official to enforce it anyway.
The Practical Takeaway
A law that seems ridiculous is still enforceable until a court strikes it down or a legislature repeals it. A dealership that opens on Sunday in the wrong state faces real fines and potential license revocation. A homeowner who ignores a grass-height citation can end up with a lien on the property. An officer in a jurisdiction with an unrepealed morality law can initiate an arrest, creating legal costs and stress for the target even if the charge is eventually thrown out. If you live or do business somewhere with one of these oddball statutes, finding out about it in advance is cheaper than finding out from a citation.