Cut Loose! Arkansans Can Get Footloose on Sundays

In a move to tighten city law, a town in Arkansas has dumped an ordinance often referred to as the “Footloose” law, which sought to prevent illicit dancing on Sundays.

Up until it’s recent revocation, Sec. 14-91 in Fort Smith’s municipal codebook made the operation of public dance halls on a Sunday illegal. The legislation also included non-dance hall establishments that allowed dancing on Sundays. Initially signed into law by Mayor H.R. Hestand in 1953, an emergency clause in the ordinance suggested that Sunday dancing “greatly endangers the public health, safety and welfare.” The law followed the trend of other blue laws, or laws that were put into place to restrict activity on Sundays such as hunting and watching horse racing.

The ordinance drew parallels to Footloose, a musical whose plot is derived from similar dancing prohibitions. While the dancing ban in the musical is rather strict, Fort Smith officials maintained that there is no record of the ordinance being used as the basis for an arrest or fine.

“If you don’t care to dance on Sunday, that’s fine,” reportedly said City Director Andre Good, who headed efforts to repeal the ordinance. “We should all respect that. But let’s not impose some outdated, outmoded morality code on all our fine fellow citizens.”

Good believed that the fight against the dancing ordinance would allow for other unenforced laws to be examination and eventually repeal.

With this in mind, city leaders not only backed Good, but they reconvened a few days later and unanimously agreed to dissolve seven of the 34 commissions, boards, and committees that were believed to be outdated, including the Massard Prairie Civil War Battlefield Park Advisory Commission, the Oak Cemetery Commission, the Outside Agency Review Panel, the Parking Authority, the Residential Housing Facilities Board, the Riverfront Task Force, and the Streets Bridges and Associated Drainage Capital Improvements Plan Advisory Committee.

Bonus link: Reason‘s previous coverage on dancing ordinances and bans in Arizona, Ohio, California, and Washington, DC.