No, Georgia Has No Law Against Keeping a Donkey in Your Bathtub

The Short Answer

The claim that it is illegal to keep a donkey in a bathtub in Georgia is a fabricated legal myth with no basis in any Georgia statute, ordinance, or regulation. No equivalent law has been found in any other U.S. state either.

The Full Story

This is one of the internet's most persistent legal urban legends, freely attributed to Georgia, Arizona, Oklahoma, and even Brooklyn, New York depending on the source — a telltale sign of myth-making rather than genuine legal history. The story always comes packaged with a colorful origin tale: in 1924, a farmer or merchant near Kingman, Arizona allegedly let his donkey sleep in an old bathtub. When a dam burst and flooded the town, the donkey floated downstream inside its porcelain vessel, requiring an expensive, labor-intensive rescue. Outraged townspeople then demanded a law. It's a delightful yarn — and it is entirely fictional, with no documented historical basis. Legal researchers have searched Georgia's statutes and Arizona's code and found no donkey-bathtub prohibitions in either. The Tucson.com fact-checking team, the legal site Enjuris, and fact-checkers including Snopes have all concluded the law does not exist. What makes this myth so sticky is its formula: it is absurdly specific, vaguely plausible (small towns do sometimes pass oddly precise ordinances), and irresistible to share. Internet 'crazy laws' listicle sites copy from each other without verification, and through sheer repetition, fiction accumulates the appearance of fact. Georgia does have some genuine quirky laws — Gainesville has a ceremonial ordinance about eating fried chicken with utensils — but those can actually be found in municipal codes. The donkey-bathtub ban lives only in the imagination of listicle writers.

Common Misconceptions

The law is frequently attributed to multiple different U.S. states simultaneously (Georgia, Arizona, Oklahoma, and even New York), which is itself a strong indicator of myth. Some listicle sites attempt to pin it to the city of Jonesboro, Georgia, but provide no ordinance number, no municipal code reference, and no verifiable source. The vivid '1924 flood' origin story sounds authoritative but has been confirmed to have no historical basis by multiple fact-checkers.

Actual Legal Text

No such law exists. A search of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (O.C.G.A.), Georgia municipal codes, and official animal protection statutes yields zero references to any restriction on keeping donkeys in bathtubs — at the state, county, or municipal level.