Planning on playing a casual game of catch with your child on the sidewalk outside your home or on a quiet cul-de-sac? You might want to reconsider if you’re in Los Angeles, because you’d technically be committing a crime.
A little-known and rarely enforced provision in the Los Angeles Municipal Code prohibits ball games on most streets or sidewalks. Violators face a fine of up to $1,000, a jail term of up to six months, or both.
But that may change soon. Staff members for Bob Blumenfield, a Los Angeles City Council member, stumbled on the provision last year. It seemed “uncommonly silly,” said Jake Flynn, a spokesperson for Blumenfield, even compared with the pantheon of other quirky municipal laws in Los Angeles. (One example: Horse-drawn carriages are prohibited in one part of the city between 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. every day.)
So Blumenfield put forward a motion to begin the process of repealing the law. It was approved by the council in a 14-0 vote, without discussion, last Tuesday.
Section 56.16, the law set to be repealed, states: “No person shall play ball or any game of sport with a ball or football or throw, cast, shoot or discharge any stone, pellet, bullet, arrow or any other missile, in, over, across, along or upon any street or sidewalk or in any public park, except on those portions of said park set apart for such purposes.”
The language of the law, with its mentions of discharging stones and pellets, speaks to its era, Flynn said. “It brings up a ‘Leave It to Beaver’-esque quality” that invokes the imagery of an idyllic, old-fashioned Southern California suburbia, he said, referencing the family sitcom that aired in the 1950s and ’60s.
It was unclear exactly when and why the law came into effect, Flynn said, but the earliest reference to it Blumenfield’s team was able to find — “after talking to way too many people” — was in 1945.
That was around when the population of Los Angeles was expanding rapidly. Many new communities were being built in areas that had traditionally been farms or rural land, and the number of cars on the roads was on the rise. Lawmakers needed to create new rules to keep both drivers and pedestrians safe, Flynn said.
How often the law was enforced is also unclear. Flynn said he was aware of only one or two instances.
Still, a repeal would end the slim possibility of enforcement in the future, which would be “a brazen injustice,” he said.
The next step in the repeal process is for the Los Angeles City Attorney to draft an ordinance to that effect, which would go back to the council for a second vote. Flynn said that he was not expecting any opposition.
“Our hope is that in the near future, our council members will be leading a great, legal game of catch out on the sidewalks of Los Angeles,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
