The weirdest laws in the world that are still on the books tend to be the ones nobody expects: Singapore can fine you tens of thousands of dollars for importing chewing gum, the FDA officially tolerates a set number of insect fragments in your peanut butter, and a small California town requires a permit to wear high heels. These are not internet legends. They have statute numbers, enforcement histories, and real penalties attached. Plenty of the stranger-sounding “laws” that circulate online, by contrast, have no traceable source at all.
Why Old Laws Don’t Just Go Away
Legislatures are much better at passing laws than repealing them. Removing a statute requires a vote, and legislators rarely spend political capital on housekeeping. The pileup is real.
A few states try to force the issue. Texas subjects roughly 130 state agencies to review about every 12 years under its Sunset Act, which can wipe out agencies and the rules they administer. Other states attach automatic expiration dates to new programs, typically 7 to 12 years out. But these reviews target agencies and regulatory boards, not the municipal ordinances that fill most “weird law” lists.
You might assume a law unenforced for a century would lose its force on its own. Legal scholars call that idea desuetude, and American courts have consistently rejected it. A statute stays valid no matter how long it sits unused. A prosecutor could theoretically revive a dormant ordinance tomorrow, though doing so might invite a due process challenge if no one had reason to know it was being enforced.
Singapore’s Chewing Gum Ban
Singapore’s ban on chewing gum is the headline example of a strange law that is fully alive. The country banned imports in the early 1990s after spending heavily to scrape gum residue off transit doors, sidewalks, and housing estates. The Regulation of Imports and Exports (Chewing Gum) Regulations prohibit bringing any chewing gum into the country.
The penalties are not symbolic. A first offense carries a fine of up to S$100,000 (roughly US$75,000), imprisonment of up to two years, or both. A second conviction doubles the maximum fine to S$200,000 and extends the potential prison term to three years.1Singapore Statutes Online. Regulation of Imports and Exports (Chewing Gum) Regulations
A narrow exception opened in 2004 under a U.S.-Singapore free trade agreement. Therapeutic and dental gum can be sold, but only by pharmacists, and the pharmacist has to record the buyer’s name. Recreational chewing gum stays completely banned, and enforcement is ongoing.
What the FDA Allows in Your Food
The U.S. federal government’s official tolerance for bugs and rodent hair in food is one of the strangest rules still in force, and it is entirely serious. The FDA publishes a Food Defect Levels Handbook that sets the maximum amount of “natural or unavoidable defects” allowed before a product is considered adulterated and subject to enforcement.2Food and Drug Administration. Food Defect Levels Handbook
The thresholds are specific. Peanut butter is acceptable until it averages 30 or more insect fragments per 100 grams.3Food and Drug Administration. CPG Sec 570.300 Peanut Butter – Adulteration with Filth; Grit Chocolate gets more latitude: up to 60 insect fragments per 100 grams, plus an average of one rodent hair per 100 grams. If a single subsample hits 90 insect fragments or 3 rodent hairs, enforcement is triggered even when the overall average stays below the threshold.4Food and Drug Administration. CPG Sec 515.700 Chocolate and Chocolate Liquor – Adulteration with Insect and Rodent Filth
The FDA’s position is that some natural contamination is unavoidable in agricultural products, and setting the threshold at zero would make most foods technically illegal.
Carmel’s High-Heel Permit
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, has a 1963 ordinance restricting shoes with spiked heels taller than two inches and a base smaller than one square inch. The city’s uneven cobblestone streets and tree roots produced a steady stream of trip-and-fall incidents, and the permit requirement was designed to shift liability away from the city. The permit itself is free and available at City Hall. Local officials treat it as a tourist draw rather than an enforcement priority, but the ordinance is on the books.
Blue Laws That Still Carry Fines
Blue laws limiting Sunday commerce are often described as quaint relics. Several of them still carry real penalties. Multiple states prohibit liquor store sales on Sundays, and in several others the restriction varies by county. Car dealerships cannot sell vehicles on Sundays in roughly a dozen states.
Bergen County, New Jersey, still bans the Sunday sale of clothing, electronics, and furniture, and the neighboring borough of Paramus enforces even tighter restrictions on most commercial activity. Businesses that violate these rules face fines and potential license revocations. Sunday hunting bans also remain in a handful of states, with full or near-total prohibitions still enforced.
The original rationale for most blue laws was religious observance. Courts have generally upheld the surviving versions under secular justifications like providing a uniform day of rest or reducing noise in residential neighborhoods.
Fortune Telling Licenses and Fraud Statutes
Several U.S. jurisdictions require fortune tellers, psychics, and astrologers to hold a business license with requirements that go beyond what a typical retailer faces. Some localities require background checks. Annual fees range from about $30 to several thousand dollars depending on the jurisdiction. The stated purpose is consumer protection against fraud rather than any position on whether psychic abilities are real.
Fraudulent fortune telling is explicitly criminalized in some states. Massachusetts treats it as a form of larceny: anyone who uses pretended fortune telling or tricks with cards to fraudulently obtain someone’s property faces the same penalties as a thief who stole goods of equivalent value.5General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 266, Section 75
Federal courts have split on where fortune telling falls on the spectrum of protected speech. The Fourth Circuit upheld a Virginia county’s licensing requirement under a professional-speech rationale, reasoning that government can regulate compensated advisory services. The Eighth Circuit struck down a Nebraska city’s outright ban, writing that the government cannot declare certain beliefs forbidden and that telling fortunes is speech-for-profit rather than mere commercial advertising. The outcome tends to turn on whether the regulation targets fraud or bans the practice outright.
Federal Law Recognizes Exactly Two Service Animals
Federal regulation recognizes only two species as service animals: dogs and miniature horses. The miniature horse provision is codified and comes with specific criteria facilities must consider before allowing a service horse inside. The assessment covers whether the horse is housebroken, whether the handler has it under control, whether the facility can physically accommodate the animal, and whether its presence would compromise safety requirements.6eCFR. 28 CFR 35.136 – Service Animals
Service miniature horses typically stand 24 to 34 inches tall and weigh between 70 and 100 pounds. A business that refuses entry to a qualified service miniature horse faces the same legal exposure as one that refuses a service dog.
The Weird Laws That Aren’t Real
For every genuinely strange law, two or three others exist only on the internet.
The claim that it is illegal in Samoa for a husband to forget his wife’s birthday has circulated for years. The Samoa Observer investigated and found no such law in the country’s statutes. A local lawyer called it “an apocryphal story and a great example of why you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet.” The story appears to trace back to a magazine listicle.
The supposed North Carolina ban on singing off-key follows the same pattern. No one has produced a statute citation. The closest traceable event is a 19th-century disturbing-the-peace complaint in Lumberton that had nothing to do with musical ability and everything to do with volume.
The “donkeys can’t sleep in bathtubs in Arizona” story may be the most repeated weird-law claim in America. The legend involves a rancher’s donkey that napped in a discarded bathtub, got swept down a valley in a flash flood, and prompted an ordinance to prevent future rescues. The law does not appear in modern Arizona statutes. Legal researchers have been unable to locate it, and the claim is widely regarded as either a long-expired local rule or pure urban legend.
A reliable test for any “weird law” claim: look for the statute number. Real laws have them. If the only sources repeating a claim are listicles and social media posts with no code section attached, you are almost certainly looking at a legend. The genuinely weird laws, like Singapore’s gum ban or the FDA’s insect-fragment thresholds, come with boring bureaucratic citations anyone can look up. That traceability is what separates a real oddity from a good story.