There’s a phrase out there that goes something like this: “You don’t know where the line is drawn until you cross it.”
For most of us citizens, though, those lines—some may call them “laws”—are drawn with clarity. However, there are a few crazy forms of litigation that still exist in each state that you may not know you’re even breaking because they’re just that absurd. And Pennsylvania’s is one of the absurdest.
Compiled and listed by BeenVerified.com—which seeks to help people leverage public information in order to better their lives—there’s certainly a story behind each of these laws that got them created in the first place (i.e., one citizen’s agitation towards something else that somehow passed through the local government).
Take, for example, the fact that it’s illegal to honk your horn outside of a sandwich shop—or anywhere that sells cold drinks, actually—in Little Rock, Ark. after 9 p.m. lest you’re willing to pay a fine of up to $1,000 (plus $2,000 for any additional offenses). Or the law in Delaware that prohibits pawn shop owners from accepting artificial limbs or wheelchairs as payment (what?). This one can land you a fine of up to $10,000.
In Pennsylvania specifically, there’s one law that makes it illegal to barter using infants, meaning you can’t trade, buy, or sell a baby. Somehow we’d think this is just common sense (or basic humanity), but the state government found it necessary at one point to make it a first-degree misdemeanor.
Other states’ more boring sides are certainly exposed with these laws, as swearing in public is prohibited in Rockville.
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