FORT SMITH, Ark. — Officials in a western Arkansas city say residents can finally kick off their Sunday shoes.
Fort Smith city directors recently repealed a 1953 ordinance that essentially outlawed public dancing on Sundays. Locals who knew about it called it the “Footloose” ordinance, nicknamed for the 1984 movie starring Kevin Bacon about a town that banned dancing and rock music.
City Director Andre Good introduced the repeal after a resident told him about the antiquated law, which barred the operation of public dance halls or any place with dancing on Sundays.
The law’s emergency clause said public dancing on the day “greatly endangers the public health, safety and welfare.”
A city spokeswoman says no one’s been arrested or ticketed in two decades for cutting loose on Sundays. Even so, Good says, the city shouldn’t be able to impose “some outdated, outmoded morality code.”
