Ugly laws

[snopes]

Comment: I was recently told about the historical existence of so-called
'ugly laws', laws once in effect in various places of the USA described as
making it illegal for people with severe disfigurements or disabilities to
go out in public, on pain of being arrested for upsetting normal folk.
Such laws were alluded to in the recent film "Music Within". A bit of
research on the Internet came up with intriguing but ambiguous results;
the 'ugly laws" seem to be partly fact and partly - maybe mostly - urban
legend. Here's what I found by googling about, and I'd be curious to know
if more could be found out about it.

I found several capsule histories of the status of the disabled in the USA
referring to the 'ugly laws', usually in the same terms. More snuffling
about revealed that most of these statements seemed to hark back to a
single source, an essay by M. Cathleen Kaveny, J.D.Associate Professor of
Law at the University of Notre Dame:

"A person with an obvious disability making his way along Chicago's
Michigan Avenue in December 1970 would not simply have been enjoying the
spectacle of one of the nation's busiest commercial venues at the height
of the Christmas shopping season. Whether he knew it or not, he also would
have been engaged in an act of civil disobedience. On the books of the
Chicago Municipal Code at that time was an ordinance colloquially known as
"The Ugly Law".It provided that:

'No person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so
as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or improper person to be
allowed in or on the public ways or other public places in this city, or
shall therein or thereon expose himself to public view, under a penalty of
not less than one dollar nor more than fifty dollars for each offense.'

Similar laws could be found on the books in cities such as Columbus,
Ohio, and Omaha, Nebraska. They were not repealed until around 1973 or
1974."

From 'an obvious disability' to 'unsightly or disgusting' seemed to me to
be quite a jump, and a further clue that the spin being put on these
laws - city by-laws, actually - was more than a tad distorted came from a
brief reference in another place to the effect that all the so-called
"ugly laws" were in fact not about disability or "ugliness" per se, but
rather about the exploitative use of physical deformity for the purpose of
soliciting alms in public places. Re-reading the Chicago ordnance in that
light, it looks more like a case of very bad legal drafting (note that the
ordnance as written is actually ungrammatical; the subject of the
sentence - 'No person' - has no verb). I suspect that the phrase ". . .
expose himself to public view . . " was really intended to cover only
people deliberately exhibiting or making a show of their disfigurements to
collect money from passers-by. Putting on a freak show, in effect.

Now it may well be that the Chicago ordinance in particular was so badly
worded that it could allow for the possibility that someone with a major
disfiguring disability (as opposed to merely an 'obvious disability')
could be arrested just for going outdoors or entering a public
establishment. I doubt the case would stand up in court, though. In any
event the absence of any reference in the disabled persons' rights sites
to any actual instance of this ever happening strikes me as eloquent: if
the law actually had ever been used that way, I should think we'd be
hearing about it.

[Buckle Up]

snopes, it must be so delightful when you receive such an unusually eloquent and coherent comment, as opposed to the usual "how dare u say bloddy mary not real we did it and itz truuuuuuue!!!"

[Chloe]

Originally Posted by Buckle Up

snopes, it must be so delightful when you receive such an unusually eloquent and coherent comment, as opposed to the usual "how dare u say bloddy mary not real we did it and itz truuuuuuue!!!"

Pah! Look at the rampant punctuation errors! I bet this person can't even spell "honor" or "center" correctly!

[Hip Zu]

A quick search of Illinois cases on LEXIS revels no cases involing the "Ugly Law." Now, absence of proof does not always equal proof of absence (esp. since LEXIS generally only contains appellate opinions, and only published ones at that), but I would think any such prosecution would have been appealed vigorously.

OT: Professor Kaveny -- the professor cited in the OP -- was my Contracts professor in law school. Just thought I'd share...

-- Hip Zu

[Canuckistan]

Originally Posted by Buckle Up

snopes, it must be so delightful when you receive such an unusually eloquent and coherent comment, as opposed to the usual "how dare u say bloddy mary not real we did it and itz truuuuuuue!!!"

I know! This person's even done some research!

There are intelligent people left out there!

Originally Posted by Chloe

I bet this person can't even spell "honour" or "centre" correctly!

Fixed yer spelling errors for ya, Chloe!

[Winged Monkey]

Originally Posted by Hip Zu

A quick search of Illinois cases on LEXIS revels no cases involing the "Ugly Law." Now, absence of proof does not always equal proof of absence (esp. since LEXIS generally only contains appellate opinions, and only published ones at that), but I would think any such prosecution would have been appealed vigorously.
-- Hip Zu

Yeah I couldn't find anything on Lexis - either, I think repealed municipal codes are beneath its notice.

Did find this though - which is interesting and has some cites to old State Codes -- evidence points to the past existence of 'ugly laws' even if I can't easily track down an actual copy of one. Sounds like someone somewhere has a good admin law note.

Spurred by the eugenics movement, every state in the country passed laws that singled out people with mental or physical disabilities for institutionalization. (Many of those laws are reproduced in the Appendix.) Often, these laws made it clear that the state's purpose was not to benefit disabled people but to segregate them from "normal" society. Thus, statutes noted that the disabled were segregated and institutionalized for being a "menace to society,"(26) so that "society [may be] relieved from the heavy economic and moral losses arising from the existence at large of these unfortunate persons."(27)

The state-sponsored mission to remove persons with disabilities from society was so pervasive that many state governments even required their citizenry to assist them in locating and segregating these citizens. Physicians, teachers, and social workers, and even the general public were to report to the government all persons "believed by them to be feeble minded."(28) Some statutes authorized the removal of children with disabilities from their homes, even against the parents' wishes.(29) The state of Washington made it a crime for a parent to refuse state-ordered institutionalization. See 1905 Wash. Laws 135, ch. 70, § 9 (App. 263). Once children were institutionalized, many state laws required parents to waive all custody rights.(30)

From the Amicus below:
http://www.bazelon.org/issues/disabi...ief.html#N_27_

-Winged Monkey

[Lainie]

An acquaintance of my mother's once commented about my uncle, a burn victim, that "people like that should stay home."

Interestingly, babies and children love him, "disfigurement" and all.

[RoseyDawn]

Personal opinion - people like your mother's acquaintance are the ones who should stay home.

Pardon if I've offended you with that remark.

[Victoria J]

Originally Posted by RoseyDawn

Personal opinion - people like your mother's acquaintance are the ones who should stay home.

Pardon if I've offended you with that remark.

I'm not Lainie's official spokes person - but I'm pretty sure that she won't be offended giving the burning rage aimed at that thoughtless loon.

I think you're spot on - if you (general) feel you are too sensitive to see people who don't measure up to your standards then you are the one with the responsibility to stay home.

Victoria J

[SmallTownKid]

Originally Posted by Lainie

An acquaintance of my mother's once commented about my uncle, a burn victim, that "people like that should stay home."

Interestingly, babies and children love him, "disfigurement" and all.

Sheesh. People never cease to amaze me. I mean, even if your mother's acquaintance had that opinion, what made him/her think that that was an OK thing to say to a family member. There are so many levels of stupid and insensitive there I don't even know where to begin.

[Bettie Page Turner]

I wonder if a law like this might have been spurred by the long-since-disproved belief in maternal impression.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by RoseyDawn

Personal opinion - people like your mother's acquaintance are the ones who should stay home.

Pardon if I've offended you with that remark.

Hardly. I was furious.

[Winged Monkey]

Originally Posted by Bettie Page Turner

I wonder if a law like this might have been spurred by the long-since-disproved belief in maternal impression.

I wouldn't be too amazed if that was part of it. The Amicus brief I linked to above is a historical account (short) of legal discrimination against the handicapped, and seemed to suggest that most of these 'ugly laws' were from the time when Eugenics was deemed a science. They went hand in hand with sterilizations and other ghastly ways we've treated our disabled (especially our mentally disabled).

That another ridiculous lump of faux-science would be involved would be simply more of the same I guess.

As to the modern people saying the disfigured shouldn't be on the streets - that's plain nasty. I understand that some have trouble relating to people with serious injuries, disfigurement, but really!

I can't help but wonder if the ugly laws, and the attitude that would cause something similar today are the result of modern medicine. It seems like back even in the 19th century a lot more people would have had disfiguring injuries and diseases without much that doctors could do for them - while today it takes an especially bad case or injury that plastic surgery can't fix.

-Winged Monkey