Fornication Laws Still on the Books in the United States

Which states still have fornication laws?

As of October 2026, the published codes of five states still contain a statute that punishes sex or cohabitation between unmarried people: Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi and Illinois. A sixth state, North Dakota, keeps a section titled "Fornication," but it now reaches only sexual acts in public and acts by minors ^[7]. In the legal sense used by these codes, fornication means sexual intercourse between two people who are not married to each other; Cornell's Legal Information Institute notes that the conduct is now more commonly called premarital sex ^[1].

The statutes do not all describe the same conduct. Georgia's is the broadest on its face: an unmarried person commits fornication by voluntarily having intercourse with another person ^[2]. South Carolina, North Carolina and Mississippi aim at couples who live together or have habitual relations, so a single encounter is not what their texts address ^[3][4][5]. Illinois narrows the offense in another way, covering only conduct that is "open and notorious" ^[6].

Most of these provisions are very old. North Carolina's cohabitation clause traces back to an act of 1805, Mississippi's to Hutchinson's code of 1848, South Carolina's to an act of 1880, and Georgia's to laws of 1833 that were carried into the state's 1968 criminal code ^[2][3][4][5]. Their survival says more about legislative inertia than about any current enforcement policy, a point discussed below.

This list reflects the statutes verified for this article in official or widely used code compilations. It is not a guarantee that no other state code contains a related provision under a different heading, and this overview describes statutes and case law; it is not legal advice.

Fornication and cohabitation statutes in state codes (checked October 2026)

State	Statute	What the text covers	Listed penalty	Status
Georgia	O.C.G.A. § 16-6-18	Voluntary intercourse by an unmarried person	Misdemeanor: up to $1,000 and/or 12 months	In the code; barred for private, unforced, non-commercial conduct (In re J.M., 2003)
South Carolina	S.C. Code §§ 16-15-60, 16-15-80	Unmarried couple living together, or habitual intercourse	$100 to $500 and/or 6 months to 1 year	In the code
North Carolina	N.C.G.S. § 14-184	Unmarried man and woman who cohabit	Class 2 misdemeanor	In the code
Mississippi	Miss. Code § 97-29-1	Unlawful cohabitation in adultery or fornication	Up to $500 and 6 months	In the code (2025 edition)
Illinois	720 ILCS 5/11-40	Intercourse with a non-spouse, only if open and notorious	Class B misdemeanor	In the code
North Dakota	N.D.C.C. § 12.1-20-08	Despite its title, only sex in public or by minors	Class A or B misdemeanor	In the code, narrow scope
Massachusetts	G.L. c. 272, § 18	Fornication	—	Repealed by Acts 2018, c. 155 (approved July 25, 2018)
Utah	Utah Code § 76-7-104	Intercourse by an unmarried person	Was a class B misdemeanor	Repealed by S.B. 43 (signed March 27, 2019; effective May 14, 2019)
Virginia	Va. Code § 18.2-344	Fornication	Was a fine of up to $250	Struck down in 2005; repealed by Acts 2020, c. 122 (H.B. 245, effective July 1, 2020)
Idaho	Idaho Code § 18-6603	Fornication	—	Repealed by S.B. 1325, effective July 1, 2022
Minnesota	Minn. Stat. § 609.34	Fornication	—	Repealed by 2023 Laws, ch. 52

What penalties do these statutes list?

Every surviving statute carries a modest penalty, from a fine to at most a year in jail, and most are expressly labeled misdemeanors. In Georgia, fornication is "punished as for a misdemeanor," which under the state's general sentencing rule means a fine of up to $1,000, up to 12 months in jail, or both ^[2][8]. South Carolina sets the most specific range: a fine of $100 to $500, imprisonment of six months to one year, or both, at the court's discretion ^[3].

North Carolina classifies its offense as a Class 2 misdemeanor and adds an evidence rule: the admissions or confessions of one partner cannot be received against the other ^[4]. Mississippi allows a fine of up to $500 and up to six months in the county jail, and it states that the couple need not live together openly as husband and wife; circumstances showing habitual intercourse are enough to prove the offense ^[5]. Illinois makes its narrow fornication offense a Class B misdemeanor and exempts a person from prosecution when liability rests only on information given to comply with a provision of the state's Public Aid Code ^[6].

North Dakota's section shows how a statute can keep an old title while its substance changes. Its "Fornication" section makes a sexual act in a public place a class A misdemeanor for an adult, and makes a sexual act by a minor a class B misdemeanor unless the minor was the victim of another listed sex offense ^[7]. Private conduct between consenting adults falls outside its text altogether.

Why can't these laws be enforced today?

These laws are considered unenforceable against consenting adults in private because of Lawrence v. Texas, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 26, 2003 ^[9]. The Court ruled by six votes to three. Five justices held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects adults who engage in private, consensual intimate conduct, and they overruled Bowers v. Hardwick (1986); Justice Sandra Day O'Connor agreed with the result but relied on the Equal Protection Clause ^[9]. Cornell's Legal Information Institute draws the consequence for fornication statutes directly: because private sexual acts are protected, these laws cannot be enforced ^[1].

The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, never used the word fornication, and it set out clear limits. The Court said the case did not involve minors, people who might be injured or coerced, public conduct or prostitution ^[9]. Those limits explain why states can still punish sex in public or involving minors, even under a section labeled "fornication," as North Dakota does ^[7]. Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas, listed fornication among the state laws that the decision called into question ^[9].

Courts in two states have applied this logic to fornication itself. On January 13, 2003, a few months before Lawrence, the Supreme Court of Georgia held that the state constitution's right to privacy barred the use of the fornication statute against a 16-year-old whose conduct with his 16-year-old girlfriend was private, unforced, non-commercial and between people legally able to consent ^[10]. On January 14, 2005, the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down that state's fornication law in Martin v. Ziherl (269 Va. 35), a civil case in which a trial judge had refused damages because the injury occurred during what he considered an "illegal act" ^[11]. Justice Elizabeth B. Lacy wrote the opinion; no justice dissented, and Chief Justice Hassell concurred in the judgment ^[24].

No ruling identified for this article has struck down the remaining statutes in South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi or Illinois by name. Their unenforceability rests on the reasoning of Lawrence rather than on a decision addressed to each text, so the precise status of each law would depend on how state courts applied that precedent if a prosecution were ever brought.

Which states repealed their fornication laws recently?

Five states formally removed fornication from their criminal codes between 2018 and 2023: Massachusetts, Utah, Virginia, Idaho and Minnesota. Massachusetts acted first. Chapter 155 of the Acts of 2018, titled "An Act relative to reproductive health" and approved by the governor on July 25, 2018, repealed sections 14 and 18 to 21 of chapter 272 of the General Laws, a block that included the adultery and fornication offenses as well as old limits on contraception ^[19]. The state's trial court law libraries now state that sex between unmarried consenting adults is not against the law ^[20].

Utah followed in 2019. Its code section 76-7-104 had made any unmarried person who voluntarily had intercourse guilty of fornication, a class B misdemeanor; the repeal came through Senate Bill 43, sponsored by Senator Karen Mayne, which Governor Gary Herbert signed on March 27, 2019 and which took effect on May 14, 2019, the date from which the official code marks the section repealed ^[12][22]. Virginia's repeal came in 2020, fifteen years after Martin v. Ziherl. The code shows section 18.2-344 repealed by Acts 2020, chapter 122, and local reporting identified the measure as House Bill 245, signed by Governor Ralph Northam on March 4, 2020 and effective July 1, 2020, which ended an offense carrying a fine of up to $250 ^[13][14][23].

Idaho's repeal was part of a broader rewrite of its sex-crime statutes. Senate Bill 1325 passed the Senate 33-0 on February 28, 2022, and the House 65-5 on March 17; the governor signed it on March 22, and it took effect on July 1, 2022 as Session Law chapter 124 ^[15]. The bill followed an October 25, 2021 meeting of a subcommittee of the Idaho Criminal Justice Commission, whose notes concluded that the adultery and fornication statutes criminalized constitutionally protected conduct under Lawrence and should both be repealed ^[16].

Minnesota completed its repeal in 2023. A 2022 House bill sponsored by Representative Kelly Moller, which would have repealed the fornication, adultery and sodomy statutes, cleared a committee 15-2 after she described the fornication law as "discriminatory and outdated," but it did not become law that year ^[18]. The official statutes now show section 609.34 repealed by the 2023 session laws, chapter 52, article 4, section 25 ^[17]. Two targeted searches found no further repeal of a fornication statute between January 2024 and October 2026.

Why do unenforceable laws stay on the books?

Unenforceable laws remain in state codes mainly because only a legislature can delete them, and repeal requires a bill, committee time and floor votes. A court ruling that a statute cannot be applied to certain conduct does not erase its text. Cornell's Legal Information Institute adds a procedural reason: a lawsuit generally requires actual harm rather than disagreement with a law, so a statute that nobody enforces is hard to bring before a judge and tends to stay until lawmakers repeal it ^[1].

Repeals have tended to travel inside larger packages. Massachusetts removed its fornication law in a reproductive-health act, Idaho in a sex-crimes overhaul that also created new offenses, and Virginia alongside other outdated offenses such as profane swearing in public ^[14][15][19]. Stand-alone efforts can stall, as Minnesota's 2022 bill did before the repeal finally passed in the 2023 session ^[17][18].

Old statutes can also surface outside criminal court. In Virginia, the fornication law was invoked not by a prosecutor but in a civil suit over the transmission of a disease, where the trial court dismissed the claim because of the plaintiff's own supposed offense ^[11]. In Georgia, the 2003 case began when the state opened juvenile delinquency proceedings even though the girl's parents did not pursue charges ^[10]. Such episodes are rare, but they explain why some lawmakers treat formal repeal as more than housekeeping.

How do fornication laws differ from adultery and cohabitation laws?

Fornication laws apply to people who are not married at all, while adultery laws apply when at least one partner is married to someone else. South Carolina's code draws the line explicitly: adultery covers a couple living together or having habitual intercourse when either is lawfully married to another person, and fornication covers the same conduct when both are unmarried ^[3]. The two offenses share a single penalty clause ^[3].

Georgia keeps a parallel pair of sections. Section 16-6-19 defines adultery as voluntary intercourse by a married person with someone other than the spouse, also punished as a misdemeanor, and its history likewise reaches back to the laws of 1833 ^[21]. North Dakota keeps an adultery offense as a class A misdemeanor, but prosecution requires a complaint from the offender's spouse and must begin within one year; its separate unlawful-cohabitation section was repealed in 2007 ^[7]. Virginia, which repealed its fornication statute, still lists adultery by a married person as a Class 4 misdemeanor under § 18.2-365 ^[25], whereas New York repealed its 1907 adultery law in November 2024 ^[26].

Cohabitation statutes are the third variant. North Carolina's law targets a man and woman who "lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed and cohabit" ^[4], and Mississippi's covers couples who unlawfully cohabit in adultery or fornication ^[5]. Written for opposite-sex couples, these texts date from an era when sharing a household outside marriage was itself treated as a public offense; North Carolina's code even retains a 1917 provision on unmarried men and women occupying the same hotel bedroom for an immoral purpose ^[4]. For the constitutional cases behind the current consensus, see Lawrence v. Texas and fornication laws and the Georgia background in Georgia's fornication statute and In re J.M..

Frequently asked questions

Can you be arrested for fornication in the US?

For private conduct between consenting adults, practically no. Since Lawrence v. Texas (2003), such a prosecution would face a strong constitutional challenge, and Georgia's Supreme Court has already barred one under the state constitution. Sections labeled "fornication" can still be used against sex in public or by minors, as in North Dakota.

Is living together unmarried illegal anywhere?

On paper, yes, in a few states. North Carolina, Mississippi and South Carolina still have statutes, punishable by fines or short jail terms, aimed at unmarried couples who live together or have habitual relations. These laws are not enforced against consenting adults and are considered unenforceable in that setting after Lawrence v. Texas.

Is adultery still a crime in some states?

Yes, in several states. Georgia, North Dakota and Virginia still list adultery as a misdemeanor, with North Dakota requiring a complaint from the offender's spouse, and South Carolina punishes it with a fine or up to a year in jail. Massachusetts repealed its adultery law in 2018, Idaho in 2022 and New York in 2024.

What did Lawrence v. Texas decide?

On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law against same-sex intimate conduct, ruling 6-3, with five justices holding that the Due Process Clause protects private, consensual conduct between adults. It overruled Bowers v. Hardwick (1986). The majority did not mention fornication, but its reasoning is the main reason fornication statutes are considered unenforceable.

Is fornication illegal in Georgia?

The statute is still in the code, but it cannot be used against private consensual conduct. O.C.G.A. § 16-6-18 still makes fornication a misdemeanor, yet in In re J.M. (2003) the Supreme Court of Georgia held that the state constitution's right to privacy protects private, unforced, non-commercial sex between people legally able to consent.

Which states have repealed fornication laws since 2018?

At least five: Massachusetts (2018), Utah (2019), Virginia (2020), Idaho (2022) and Minnesota (2023). Virginia's Supreme Court had already struck down its law in 2005. Idaho's repeal came in a broader sex-crimes bill that took effect on July 1, 2022.