- Several Michigan communities retain century-old anti-spitting ordinances stemming from a fight against tuberculosis
- Courts have narrowed or halted the enforcement of some outdated ordinances
- Profanity and loitering bans remain on the books in some Michigan cities, where officials have tried to narrow them
Look down as you walk through the city of Marquette and you may see an unusual entreaty: DO NOT SPIT ON THE SIDEWALK.
Dig into the city code and you’ll find a related crime: “No person shall spit on any sidewalk or on the floor or seat of any public carrier, or on any floor, wall, seat or equipment of any place of public assemblage.”
The local law is among a series of outdated — and mostly unenforced — rules that remain in city codes across Michigan as relics to a prior era.
Anti-spitting ordinances still on the books in Marquette, Wyandotte and Muskegon point back to a more than century-old campaign to discourage public spitting amid a raging battle against tuberculosis.
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It was a time that “coincided with the widespread use of spittoons,” Marquette City Manager Karen Kovacs told Bridge Michigan. “Public health officials actively discouraged spitting in public places and many local governments adopted ordinances to reinforce that message.”
Today, tuberculosis is preventable and curable, but during the 1800s and 1900s, the infectious airborne disease was a death sentence that killed millions, with children and the elderly among the most vulnerable.
That prompted many American cities to adopt anti-spitting laws.
In Muskegon, spitting on a sidewalk is still technically prohibited, and violators can be cited for a civil infraction. But officers rarely cite people for the crime: It’s been documented in police reports just eight times since 2000, said Tim Bahorski, captain of the Muskegon Police Department.
“All of those incidents involved disorderly subjects or public intoxication,” he added.
Spitting is also considered a civil infraction in Marquette, but the local ordinance is “rarely (if ever) enforced,” Kovacs told Bridge in an email.
“We have been cleaning up sections of city code over the past year, but this hasn’t risen to the level of needing to be updated compared to other sections such as e-bikes,” she said.
‘Zombie’ laws and obscene language
Michigan lawmakers have in recent years worked to repeal what they call unenforceable “zombie” laws dating to bygone eras, most recently sodomy and adultery bans.
The same has happened at the local level in cities like Kalamazoo, where officials in 2022 reportedly repealed ordinances that had banned swearing and spitting in public, palm-reading and more.
Petoskey also repealed a fortune-telling ban in 2022, but the practice is still prohibited in Otsego, where it remains illegal to “pretend to tell fortunes” using “cards, tokens, trances, inspection of the hands or skull, mind reading, consulting the movements of the heavenly bodies, or otherwise.”
Court rulings over the past several decades have forced some Michigan cities to scale back or stop enforcing ordinances that restricted profanity, offensive language and loitering.
Grand Rapids has a breach-of-the-peace ordinance that prohibits the use of “profane, obscene or injurious language.” But in 2020, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled the local law conflicts with the First Amendment, so the city no longer enforces it, city spokesperson Steven Guitar told Bridge.
Cadillac’s municipal code continues to ban language deemed obscene, offensive, profane or inappropriate if it is likely to annoy others or incite a confrontation. The code also prohibits behavior considered disruptive to the city’s peace, order and decorum.
Even as courts have scrutinized comparable restrictions elsewhere, there have been no discussions to update or change the ordinance, Cadillac City Manager Marcus Peccia said.
Both cities also prohibit loitering, which originally stems from vagrancy laws that made unemployment and idleness illegal. But in the early 1970s, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled such vague rules violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
Grand Rapids, Cadillac and Warren still restrict loitering, but their ordinances have been narrowed over time. Today, they generally apply only when someone knowingly loiters where illegal activity is taking place, to solicit prostitution or to harass another person.
Cadillac’s city code specifically bans loitering in “a house of ill fame.”
Bullwhips and hitching posts
At least one Michigan city still regulates horse use on local streets, requiring them to be closely watched or fastened to a hitching post at all times.
But in this case, those rules are still heavily enforced: In 1898, Mackinac Island banned motorized vehicles to prevent them from spooking horses, which remain a primary mode of transportation on the island.
Motorists can drive to Mackinac City or St. Ignace and take the ferry over to the island, leaving their car on the mainland. The only way to get around in the city is by walking, biking or taking a horse-drawn carriage.
The city also has ordinances aimed at protecting horses, including bans on negligent behavior that could frighten or disturb them and prohibitions against cracking a bullwhip within 100 feet of a horse.
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