Some laws are obsolete. If you drive through rural parts of Pennsylvania at night, a law requires you stop every mile to send up a rocket signal. (https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/top-craziest-laws-still-on-the-books)
Some laws are unnecessary. It’s actually illegal to drive blindfolded in Alabama. (https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/news/g4039/crazy-state-laws/?)
Some laws are just plain dumb. In Arkansas, it’s illegal to mispronounce the state’s name, as if that would be a serious offense. (https://www.rd.com/list/dumbest-laws-america/)
But then I found something even worse: a National Geographic article entitled “Illegal to be ’Ugly’? The History Behind One of America‘s Cruelest Laws”. (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/history-of-ugly-laws-america-disability?)
No, seriously! To quote the subtitle: “For nearly a century, so-called “ugly laws” banned people with visible disabilities and diseases from public spaces, revealing society’s harsh standards of beauty and the impact on those who didn’t meet them.”
The idea started in San Francisco, which in 1867 made it a crime for “any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object” to “expose himself or herself to public view.” This was an era when public behavior and social norms were under sanction, especially regarding racial integration, immigration, and vagrancy, according to Susan M. Schweik, author of The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public. This idea swiftly spread to other locations, including Chicago, New Orleans, and the state of Pennsylvania.
What was the rationale? Some considered this a public-health initiative, as though viewing disability could literally make one sick. Others thought it would discourage panhandlers from faking disabilities.
Of course there were serious consequences, The article gives the example of a Cleveland man with clubbed hands and feet who had to quit his job selling newspapers in the mid-1910s. He struggled to support himself and his family until a drug store owner allowed him to sell from his store’s front stoop, which was considered private property and therefore legal.
Although the last known arrest was in 1974 in Omaha, Nebraska, these laws did leave a legacy. On the negative side, some cities now have “sidewalk management plans” to deter behavior considered anti-social or unsightly.
But on the positive side, advocates in the 1970s used the laws as an example of discrimination that needed legal protections. The result was the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, definitely a step in a more uplifting direction.