Spitting on the Sidewalk Is Illegal in Las Vegas

Buried in Title 10 of the Las Vegas Municipal Code — Public Peace, Morals and Welfare — sits Chapter 10.38, titled simply 'Spitting.' Its lone section, 10.38.010, makes it unlawful to spit 'on the floor, platform or steps of a railroad station,' and in 'any public building, hall, church, theater, market, post office, assembly room, elevator, public sidewalk, park or public place.' The railroad-station language betrays its age: this ordinance predates the Strip. It's a classic early-twentieth-century public-health measure from the tuberculosis era, when anti-spitting laws swept American cities — and Las Vegas simply never repealed its copy.

The penalty is the best evidence of dormancy: a fine of five to twenty-five dollars, or up to thirty days in city jail. Those amounts haven't been updated in roughly a century — a working ordinance would have been re-penalized long ago. The Review-Journal profiled the law in a 2023 roundup of odd rules still on the city's books, and no documented modern citation has surfaced. It is real law, it is still technically enforceable, and it has been, for many decades now, entirely asleep.

Las Vegas isn't alone, though. Up north, Sparks has a twin: Sparks Municipal Code 9.30.040 makes it unlawful to intentionally spit upon another person, or on any sidewalk, public building, or public conveyance in the city. And there's a live wire inside that antique: spitting on a person does still get charged in Sparks, usually alongside battery. Sidewalk-spitting prosecutions are effectively nil statewide — but aim at a human being and a TB-era ordinance suddenly wakes up with modern consequences.