Guide Collections Laws Updated July 7, 2026

Weird Illinois Laws Still on the Books

Illinois State Capitol building in Springfield under a clear sky

Weird Illinois Laws Still on the Books

Collection - Laws

The Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, the same state where recording your own conversation without the other person's consent can be a felony.

Quick Answer

Weird Illinois Laws Still on the Books

  1. 1

    Four Illinois weird-law claims check out: a Joliet mispronunciation ordinance, a first-cousin marriage rule, a strict eavesdropping law, and a Mendota bicycle ordinance.

  2. 2

    The eavesdropping law is the most serious of the four. Recording your own conversation without the other person's consent can be a felony in Illinois.

  3. 3

    Eating inside a burning building in Chicago is a myth. No statute or ordinance has ever matched that specific claim.

Unusual Laws in Illinois That Are Real

A city ordinance about pronouncing its own name and a statewide rule about marrying a cousin anchor the Unusual Laws in Illinois that check out against the actual code. All four remain active today.

Joliet's Official Pronunciation Ordinance

Joliet's Official Pronunciation Ordinance

Law
Joliet's city code names one official pronunciation of its own name, accenting the first syllable, and sets a $5 fine for saying it wrong.
Meaning
Say the city's name the more common outside way, and you're technically breaking a real ordinance, even if nobody has enforced it in decades.
Reason
City founders reportedly grew tired of visitors, especially from nearby Chicago, mispronouncing the name and wrote the rule to settle the argument permanently.
First Cousins Can Only Marry Under Specific Conditions

First Cousins Can Only Marry Under Specific Conditions

Law
Illinois bans marriage between first cousins unless both parties are over 50, or at least one presents a doctor's certificate confirming permanent sterility.
Meaning
A first-cousin couple under 50 who can still have children cannot legally marry in Illinois, but the same couple can if they wait or provide medical proof.
Reason
The age and sterility conditions target the genetic risk tied to close-relative reproduction, while still allowing the marriage once that specific risk no longer applies.
Recording Your Own Conversation Can Be a Felony

Recording Your Own Conversation Can Be a Felony

Law
Illinois requires the consent of everyone involved before recording a conversation that any party reasonably expected to be private, even if you're one of the people talking.
Meaning
Secretly recording your own phone call or conversation can bring a felony charge carrying one to three years in prison.
Reason
The state rewrote the law in 2014 after its broader version was struck down as unconstitutional, narrowing it to protect only conversations with a genuine expectation of privacy instead of every recorded conversation.
No Acrobatic Bicycle Riding in Mendota

No Acrobatic Bicycle Riding in Mendota

Law
Mendota's city code bans riding a bicycle with both hands off the handlebars, both feet off the pedals, or performing acrobatic or fancy riding on any street.
Meaning
Coasting hands-free or popping a trick on a bike within city limits technically violates the ordinance.
Reason
The rule reads like a standard small-town traffic-safety measure meant to keep cyclists in control of their bikes around other street traffic, not a ban on any particular trick.

Weird Laws in Illinois We Couldn't Verify

Not all Real Illinois Laws You Won't Believe leave behind an actual statute. An oddly specific way of addressing unmarried men and a dollar-amount vagrancy rule in Chicago are two of the strangest, and neither has a citation attached anywhere.

Unmarried men must be addressed as 'master' in Illinois

Claim
Illinois law requires women to address any unmarried man, regardless of age, as "master" instead of "mister."
Why We Couldn't Verify It
No statute matching this description has ever been located in Illinois's compiled statutes, and no source offers a date, a bill number, or a clear explanation for where the claim originated.

Carrying less than a dollar can get you arrested for vagrancy in Chicago

Claim
Chicago police can arrest someone for vagrancy simply for carrying less than one dollar in cash.
Why We Couldn't Verify It
No Chicago ordinance or Illinois statute ties an arrest to that specific dollar amount. Vagrancy-style laws have existed historically in many cities, but nothing pins this exact claim to a real, citable Chicago rule.

Strange Illinois Laws That Are Myths

Eating inside a burning building is the most repeated Strange Illinois Laws myth of all, and a supposed ban on making faces at a dog turns out to be a joke recycled from other states' lists.

It's illegal to eat inside a building that's on fire in Chicago

Myth
Chicago has a specific ordinance making it illegal to eat inside a building that's actively on fire.
Reality
No such ordinance exists anywhere in Chicago's municipal code. Legal researchers who have gone looking for the source have come up empty, and the claim appears to be a pure internet fabrication with no factual basis at all.

Illinois bans making funny faces at a dog

Myth
The Illinois Animal Control Act makes it illegal to make funny faces at a dog or hand a lit cigar to a cat.
Reality
No actual bill text matching either claim has ever been produced from the real Animal Control Act. The exact same "making faces at a dog" joke shows up recycled across weird-law lists for several other states with identical wording, which is a strong sign it was never tied to Illinois specifically.

Why Illinois's Home Rule Cities Keep Their Own Odd Ordinances

Small Illinois city hall representing one of the state's home rule municipalities
Home rule lets Illinois cities write their own ordinances independently, which is how quirks like Joliet's pronunciation rule survive without any statewide review.

Illinois's 1970 constitution gave home rule power to any city with more than 25,000 residents, plus any smaller city that votes to adopt it, letting each one pass its own ordinances without asking permission from Springfield. That's exactly how Joliet ended up with its own pronunciation rule and Mendota got its own bicycle ordinance: hundreds of home rule cities each keep a separate code, and no statewide office is in charge of reviewing or repealing what any single one of them decided decades ago.

Key Facts

1 Illinois's cousin-marriage exception requires either both spouses to be over 50 or documented proof of permanent sterility, one of the more specific such rules among the states that restrict cousin marriage at all.
2 The 2014 rewrite of Illinois's eavesdropping law came after the state Supreme Court struck down the earlier version for criminalizing recordings even when nobody involved expected privacy.
3 Joliet's pronunciation ordinance sets its fine at exactly $5, a number that hasn't been adjusted since the rule was written.
4 Illinois's Litter Control Act specifically names grass clippings as an example of litter when dumped improperly, alongside more expected items like cigarette butts and packaging.
5 More than 200 Illinois municipalities currently operate under home rule authority, each maintaining a separate local code from the others.

Quick Answers

Is the Joliet pronunciation law actually real?
Yes. The city's code names one official pronunciation and sets a $5 fine for getting it wrong.
Can first cousins get married in Illinois?
Only under specific conditions. Illinois requires both parties to be over 50, or at least one to provide a doctor's certificate confirming permanent sterility, before allowing a first-cousin marriage.
Is it illegal to record your own phone call in Illinois?
Sometimes, yes. Illinois requires consent from everyone in a conversation that any party reasonably expected to be private, even from the person doing the recording. Violating it can be charged as a felony.
Is it illegal to eat in a burning building in Chicago?
No. This is one of the most repeated fake laws about Illinois online, and no matching ordinance has ever been found in Chicago's municipal code.
What is the weirdest real law still on the books in Illinois?
The first-cousin marriage rule surprises most people, mainly because of how specific its exception is.
Is Illinois's animal-face law real?
No confirmed statute backs up the claim that making funny faces at a dog is illegal. It's a recycled joke that shows up attached to several other states with the same wording.

Sources

Information is cross-referenced with official state archives.
Found an error? Report it here.

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