The Los Angeles City Council voted 14-0 Tuesday to repeal a city law that prohibited residents from playing catch or other sports on public streets and sidewalks and in some parks.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield began the effort to repeal the law in August 2025 after his office came across the section, which he said was enacted in 1936. He described the regulation as an \u201cuncommonly silly law\u201d that could subject residents to a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail for playing on a street, sidewalk or in public parks, except on designated courts or fields.<\/p>\n
Municipal Code Section 56.16, titled Streets-Sidewalks-Playing Ball or Games of Sport, mandated that \u201cNo 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 part set apart for such purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any serious activities in the code section, such as firing a weapon or shooting arrows, are already prohibited by other laws, according to Blumenfield.<\/p>\n
City officials said the law was outdated and no longer appropriate for a modern city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s worse, in an era of traffic violence, when traffic violence has become epidemic, this law sends exactly the wrong message about who should be held responsible for unsafe driving,\u201d Blumenfield said during Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
He noted that Los Angeles Police Department officials confirmed this particular municipal code is not very well enforced.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe original intent of this law may have been benign, which was preventing injuries in children during the dawn of an era when automobiles dominated our streets,\u201d Blumenfield said. \u201cBut the fact remains, it\u2019s on our books, and when we have records \u2014 numbers of traffic deaths and injuries that are caused by aggressive and inattentive drivers \u2014 having this on the books sends the wrong message.\u201d<\/p>\n
The council directed the City Attorney\u2019s Office to draft an ordinance for repeal in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles City Council voted 14-0 Tuesday to repeal a city law that prohibited residents from playing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,205,47,5436,50,49,100,13,136],"class_list":["post-443491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-local-politics","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-city-council","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}