LA Finally Repeals 1936 Law That Made Playing Catch a Jailable Offense

Los Angeles City Council members voted 14-0 to repeal a 1936 municipal ordinance that technically made it illegal to play catch, kick a soccer ball or toss a football on the city's streets, sidewalks and some parks. The rule, tucked into Municipal Code Section 56.16 under the heading Streets-Sidewalks-Playing Ball Or Games Of Sport, carried a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail.

The repeal effort was led by Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who began pushing to strike the law in August 2025 and did not mince words about it, calling the regulation an “uncommonly silly law,” according to MyNewsLA.com. Blumenfield noted that other laws already cover genuinely dangerous conduct, like firing a weapon or shooting arrows, making the decades-old ball-playing ban redundant on top of being outdated.

Section 56.16 didn't just target games of catch. As written, it also prohibited throwing, casting, shooting or discharging stones, pellets, bullets, arrows or other missiles in, over, across, along or upon a street, sidewalk or public park, lumping neighborhood pickup games in with far more hazardous activity. The ordinance did carve out an exception allowing ball games on designated courts or fields.

A Law Almost Nobody Enforced

Despite the harsh penalties on paper, Los Angeles Police Department officials confirmed the code was not very well enforced, per the same MyNewsLA.com account. LAPD records reviewed separately show the law was virtually unenforced across its multi-decade history, with only a couple of citations ever logged by officers, according to KIIS-FM.

Blumenfield has suggested the law's original intent may have been benign, aimed at preventing children's injuries as automobiles began dominating city streets in the mid-1930s. That reading lines up with the ordinance's documented history: in July 1948, the Van Nuys News published the text of Section 56.16 after local residents complained that children playing sports in residential streets posed a “risk to life, limb and property,” as reported by LAist.

Why did a law like this survive on the books for nine decades? Former Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who now directs the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, told LAist that obsolete municipal codes are rarely deleted in the city because local elected officials face little political incentive to clean up old statutory language. That dynamic helps explain why the ban on street games sat quietly on the books long after anyone remembered it existed.

The Long Road Through City Hall

The repeal followed a multi-stage process typical of city legislation. Blumenfield formally introduced Council File 25-0863 in August 2025, with Councilmember Monica Rodriguez seconding the motion, according to the City of Los Angeles City Clerk. The Los Feliz Neighborhood Council later submitted an official Community Impact Statement that September formally endorsing the repeal effort, city records show.

On January 13, the Council took an initial procedural step, voting 14-0 to direct the City Attorney's Office to draft the actual repeal ordinance, notably with motion author Blumenfield absent from the chamber that day, according to CBS Los Angeles. That directive vote set the stage for the final 14-0 repeal vote this week that formally struck Section 56.16 from the books.

Traffic Deaths, Not Kids With Baseballs, Drive the Real Danger

Blumenfield has framed the repeal not just as tidying up outdated language but as a statement about where responsibility for street safety actually belongs. He said the old ordinance sends the wrong message about responsibility for unsafe driving during an era of what he calls epidemic traffic violence, arguing it wrongly implies pedestrians and children playing ball bear blame for dangers actually caused by aggressive and inattentive drivers.

The numbers back up his framing. LAPD traffic collision data show 290 people were killed in Los Angeles traffic crashes in 2025, with more than 150 of those fatalities involving pedestrians, per LAist. The city has invested nearly $350 million in its Vision Zero street safety campaign since 2015, yet total annual traffic fatalities last year remained higher than when the program began, with a 2025 city audit citing structural fragmentation and a lack of political cohesion in the initiative's execution, LAist reported.

Notably, the actual danger is concentrated far from the quiet residential blocks where kids might toss a football. Los Angeles Department of Transportation data show that 65% of severe injuries and deaths involving pedestrians and cyclists occur on just 6% of the city's street network, an area LADOT calls the High Injury Network, according to Steven M. Sweat Personal Injury Lawyers. City officials involved in the repeal said the ball-playing ban was simply outdated and no longer appropriate for a modern city.

Part of a Wider Statewide Cleanup

Los Angeles's move to strike its 1930s play ban fits into a broader pattern of California municipalities updating legacy codes that have outlived their purpose. Sacramento has proposed repealing its own 1949 comic book ban, while Maui repealed a 1944 pinball ban, according to prior Hoodline reporting. With Section 56.16 now officially off the books, generations of Angelenos who grew up playing catch in the street can rest easy knowing the game was, at long last, made legal again.