I’m not sure why I never learned that the little California municipality of Carmel-by-the-Sea in Monterey has an illegal and unethical law against high-heeled shoes, since my brain is stuffed with even more useless trivia. I know now, however, and my conviction that California is hopelessly estranged from U.S. values and principles has been reinforced (again).
In 1963 the city passed a law, recommended by a City Attorney who was evidently an idiot, requiring visitors to get an official permit in order to legally walk around the place in heels higher than two inches. You can read the local ordinance here. If one wants to walk around wearing heels over two inches in height and less than one square inch of bearing surface, a permit from the city hall is required. The permits are issued free of charge, with the name of the individual making the request and the signature of a city clerk.
The reasoning behind the requirement was that the “charming” town (I hate charming!) , which resembles a section of a cheesy theme park, has uneven sidewalks that might lead to a bad fall, a law suit, and city expense. Of course, an ethical, rational, Declaration of Independence-respecting municipality would suck it up and fix the damn sidewalks. But no: this is California, where nanny-stating, treating the public like children, and regarding the right to the pursuit of happiness as limited to drugs and sex is entrenched in the culture.
The law survives because the city doesn’t enforce it and visitors think it’s cute: tourists sometimes get permits as souvenirs. My position: bad laws aren’t cute. The law is discriminatory against women and cowboys (I trip on uneven paths and sidewalks all the time, and it has nothing to do with high heels) and intrinsically offensive, a blame-the-victim measure based on a principle that if carried to its illogical conclusions would ban shoes with laces (you might trip on them!), sunglasses (you might miss seeing that snake in the grass!) and lozenges (you might choke!).
Unenforced laws are unethical because they encourage disrespect for the law generally: the Golden State started with ignoring high heel violations, and now it’s not enforcing laws against shop-lifting and pooping in public. Not only are they not cute, stupid laws aren’t funny either, as the various features about Carmel-by-the-Sea suggest: they are destructive to the rule of law. Passing unenforceable laws (this one would be struck down in any sane court in the nation) shows contempt for individual rights.
It also justifies contempt for law enforcement. Imagine police stopping women to measure their shoe heels with little rulers.
Ethics Alarms 
I can imagine in my mind’s eye a ’60’s-style newsreel showing happy policemen and happy women smiling at the camera as the policemen hold rules up to measure the heels as if they had nothing better to do.
Now, I want that newsreel to exist…
I would be very interested to know what prompted such a law. Most laws are written for a reason. Were high-heeled shoes considered scandalous? Were they thought to be dangerous? Unhealthy for women’s feet? Is there an application process that requires a signature and the clerk just wanted an excuse to get autographs from well-heeled celebrities?
I will offer the opinion that this law is designed to protect the City treasury. Should someone fall due to (or claimed) questionable sidewalk surfaces, the City can try to escape responsibility by either 1) the injured party was operating in an unlawful manner, or 2) that the paperwork for obtaining the required permit warns of the hazard of the high-heeled footgear on Carmel’s quaint sidewalks.
I was thinking the same thing. I wonder if that sort of “high heel wearer beware” ordinance would be enforceable. Wouldn’t sovereign immunity protect the municipality anyway? I can’t imagine a local government consenting to be sued for property hazards in the public square.
jvb
The sidewalks in my town range from bad to non-existent everywhere but Main Street. However, the town also says that the property owner is in charge of the sidewalk. So if my section of sidewalk sucks, if I don’t like it, I have to pay to fix it. I can pay to fix my sidewalk section (assuming I can find someone to do so and can afford to spend the money on such a non-necessity), but if my neighbors don’t care, and they don’t, the sidewalk on my block is still bad, with a few decent sections in front of my house. It doesn’t encourage me to do a good job, with some of my neighbors having let their sidewalks fall apart to nothing, other houses never having installed any in the first place, and others having great sidewalks, but parking all their vehicles on it so it is impassable anyway.
There is an ordinance that states that we must not have “any sidewalk in front of the premises owned or occupied by him to become or to continue so broken as to endanger life or limb”, which can be fairly vaguely interpreted and is completely unenforced unless you piss off someone in the police or city offices.
Our town has lots of unenforced rules, like it being illegal to place any handbill on a car(JWs always put stuff on vehicles around Easter), no posters of any kind allowed on poles (no missing dog signs allowed), or not having a license on your cats (I have never seen a cat with a license).
This isn’t meant as an everybody does it justification, but EVERYBODY does it. It would sure be nice if we (solved world hunger or) got rid of unneeded laws in every level of government. We should not have laws that we don’t utilize, enforce, and need. I think we have too many ridiculous laws, which does make taking some of them less seriously than we should. I wonder if our law makers time would be better spent getting rid of excess laws than fighting over new ones. Surely cleaning up our laws would make it easier to enforce them, as well as probably saving money at all levels. However, this is unlikely in the extreme, I think. Is it unethical to wish for our legislatures to actually fix problems instead of create them?
I’m picturing friend of former Mayor Clint Eastwood being ticketed for too high heels.
I agree with A M Golden. I want a cheesy prop piece on the law.
I have forwarded this information to my dominatrix, thank you very much!
At first I thought it would have something to do with wear and tear of some type of flooring given the precision of the length and surface of the heel measurements… turned out to be much dumber than that.
Speaking of unenforced laws, how about cities with laws against begging in traffic, yet their city fire department does a “fill the boot” muscular dystrophy drive. One where city employees are begging in traffic?
I get good cause and all, but it is a case of city attorneys being stupid. Time, place and manner restrictions on the first amendment are valid. After all, begging in traffic is dangerous and disruptive. But once you have city employees doing the conduct, it is straight up viewpoint discrimination.