Halloween enthusiasts often go all out with decorations, debuting larger skeletons each year or devising innovative methods to spread fake entrails and gore over their properties. But is it possible for Halloween decorations to be so extreme that they break the law?
Yes, they can. Although it’s not usually because of their content.
Officer Christian Bruckhart from the New Haven Police Department in Connecticut explained to Nexstar that most decorations are protected under the First Amendment.
Bruckhart noted there are specific exceptions regarding what a homeowner can display, similar to those under the First Amendment. For example, decorations containing “explicit threats of violence” or “defamation” could be problematic. If a homeowner were to hang an effigy of a neighbor and it was perceived as a threat, such a display might be considered criminal, Bruckhart advised.
In some cases, a Halloween installation could be illegal if it is too obscene to qualify for First Amendment protection, such as featuring graphic violence or pornographic content.
“But I can’t think of an instance of something like happening in my experience and it would be situationally dependent,” Bruckhart said.
Aside from the content of a Halloween display, noise violations usually prompt more police visits during the spooky season, police say.
“Noise is a big thing,” Captain John Burke of the Salem Police Department in Massachusetts told Nexstar. “We’ve issued a ton of noise violations.”
Burke, echoing Bruckhart, mentioned that the focus would be on “the intensity of the effect” rather than just the decorations themselves. As a precaution, Burke suggested homeowners review local regulations before setting up anything that makes loud noises or is meant to scare passersby.
Various police departments also cautioned against decorations that could cause harm to drivers or pedestrians since such setups might prompt legal action from law enforcement or intervention from the city’s building officials.
“Some possibilities could be a decoration that [is] too close to a power line, blocks a view at an intersection, or is constructed in a way that violates building codes,” Bruckhart said.
Burke, in Salem, also cautioned residents to avoid anything “so big or excessive that it could fall on someone.”
“We encourage residents to think about safety when they decorate,” Sgt. Chris Stinson, of the City of Charleston Police Department in South Carolina, said.
If, however, a homeowner happens to live in a community governed by a homeowners’ association, the rules for Halloween decorations can often be much more strict. Residents in these communities have been cited for such “offenses” as decorating too early, setting up a skeleton “strip club,” or daring to depict a scarecrow’s orange pumpkin butt.
Homeowners who don’t belong to any HOAs, meanwhile, likely wouldn’t have to worry if they put up similar displays.
“[Some] decorations might be in bad taste, or might disturb someone,” Burke said. “But we would be hard-pressed to remove things because they were in bad taste.”
