Stupid state laws are a mix of three things: real statutes still on the books, old laws that were quietly repealed years ago, and pure internet fiction that nobody ever actually passed. Sorting them out matters, because a few of the ones that sound most ridiculous can still get you fined or even charged with a felony, while others you’ve seen shared a hundred times were never law to begin with.
Odd Laws That Are Still Real
Start with the ones that still carry consequences. In Maine, car dealerships are prohibited from buying, selling, or trading motor vehicles on Sundays, and dealers can’t even open their lots that day.1Maine State Legislature. Maine Code 17-3203 – Sales of Motor Vehicles Prohibited A violation is a Class E crime with a maximum fine of $1,000.2Maine State Legislature. Maine Code 17-A-1704 – Maximum Fine Amounts Authorized for Convicted Individuals A dealer who ignores it also risks suspension or revocation of registration plates. The law is a holdover from the era of mandatory Sunday rest, and it survives partly because dealerships themselves don’t mind a guaranteed day off that applies to every competitor equally.
Arizona takes its cacti seriously. The state requires a permit from the Department of Agriculture before anyone can remove a protected native plant from its growing site. Saguaros, which can take 75 years to grow a single arm, need a tag and seal affixed before removal, plus written permission from the landowner. The permits themselves are cheap: $7 for a one-time use permit, $8 for a saguaro tag, and $0.15 per plant for the seal.3Arizona Department of Agriculture. Native Plants Skipping the paperwork is where it gets serious. Under A.R.S. § 3-932, damaging or destroying protected plants valued at $1,500 or more can be charged as a class 4 felony. Mature saguaros routinely sell for thousands, so a single act of vandalism clears that bar fast.
Kentucky’s rules on baby animals also remain fully in force. KRS § 436.600 makes it illegal to sell or possess dyed or colored baby chicks, ducklings, other fowl, or rabbits. The same statute bans selling any of these animals under two months old in quantities fewer than six, with an exception for rabbits weighing three pounds or more at six weeks. Violators face fines between $100 and $500.4Justia. Kentucky Code 436-600 – Dyeing or Selling Dyed Baby Fowl or Rabbits The target was the old Easter novelty market, where vendors dyed chicks bright colors and sold them one at a time to parents who had no plan for an adult chicken.
Louisiana has a statute specifically for a prank. R.S. 14:68.6 makes it illegal to intentionally place an order for delivery to another person when the recipient didn’t authorize it, is expected to pay for it, and the person placing the order intends to harass or annoy them. Penalties include a fine of up to $500, up to six months in jail, or both, plus possible restitution to the victim.5Justia. Louisiana Code RS 14-68.6 – Unauthorized Ordering of Goods or Services Shared as “it’s illegal to send someone a pizza in Louisiana,” it sounds ridiculous. Read as written, it’s a narrowly aimed anti-harassment law that restaurants pushed for because the pranks were costing them real money.
Laws That Sound Dumb Until You Read the Reason
A lot of what passes for stupid state laws turns out to be sensible once you know the context. The Kentucky dyed-chick ban is a good example: the dyes were often toxic, kids handled the animals roughly, and mortality was staggering. The Arizona saguaro permit requirement sounds like bureaucracy run amok until you learn that cactus poaching is a genuine problem and these plants are irreplaceable on any human timescale. The Louisiana delivery statute reads like a joke until you picture the receiving end of a hundred unordered pizzas.
The pattern repeats across most of the “weird laws” category. A legislature responded to a real problem with specific language, the problem faded from public memory, and the statute kept sitting there sounding bizarre to anyone who didn’t know what prompted it.
Famous “Stupid Laws” That Are Fake or Repealed
A big share of the laws people share online aren’t real. Widely circulated claims about Illinois include the assertions that you can be arrested for carrying less than a dollar on Chicago streets, that it’s illegal to eat in a building that’s on fire, and that fishing is prohibited on your wedding day. None of those are actual laws. The claim that Chicago bans French poodles from the opera is also fabricated. These get repeated so often that people assume someone must have checked the statute books. Almost nobody has.
Nevada’s famous camel law is a trickier case. In the mid-1800s, the U.S. Army experimented with camels as pack animals in the desert Southwest, the experiment failed, and the surviving camels were released or sold. Horses panicked around them on the roads, so Nevada banned leading camels on public highways in 1875. That law was real. It’s also no longer in the Nevada Revised Statutes. The state’s Legislative Counsel Bureau has confirmed it was removed. People still share it as current law, but it isn’t.
Michigan’s MCL 750.337 followed a similar arc. The statute made it a misdemeanor to use indecent or insulting language in the presence of women or children. It sat in the code for over a century before the legislature repealed it in 2015, effective March 2016.6Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 750.337 – Repealed For most of its life no prosecutor would have touched it, but the language remained live until lawmakers took it out. Anyone citing it today as a current Michigan law is roughly a decade behind.
How to Check Whether a Law Is Real
If you want to verify a strange-sounding statute before passing it along, every state legislature maintains a searchable database of its current code, usually linked from the legislature’s official website. Search for the specific statute number rather than browsing by topic. The databases update on a rolling basis, so very recent changes may lag. Finding nothing in the current code doesn’t fully rule out a local version, since city and county ordinances live in separate codes that aren’t always digitized, but the state database is the right first stop.
Two warning signs that a shared “stupid law” is bogus: no statute number is given, and the wording sounds engineered for the punchline. Real laws rarely read like one-liners. They tend to be dry, specific about who they apply to, and oddly focused on a problem you’ve never thought about.
Why Outdated Laws Stay on the Books
The reason so many of these oddities linger is procedural. State legislatures have limited session time and long agendas. Repealing an unenforced law ranks well below funding schools, infrastructure, and whatever crisis is dominating the news. A bill to remove a camel prohibition still takes floor time, committee review, and staff resources that lawmakers would rather spend on legislation that affects people’s daily lives. Codes accumulate dead weight over decades as a result.
There’s also a legal principle called desuetude, which holds that a law unenforced for long enough should lose its validity. Some European legal systems formally recognize it. American courts generally don’t. In the United States, a statute’s age or lack of enforcement doesn’t give courts the power to nullify it. A law passed in 1875 that has never been used stays technically valid until the legislature affirmatively repeals it. Prosecutors can decline to charge, but the language remains in the code. That’s why some of the strangest statutes still sit there, and why checking before you share one matters more than it might seem.