Is Pennsylvania's Strange Bathtub Law Actually Real?

If there is one final refuge for privacy left in this world, we could all agree that it's possibly the shower and/or bath. You can be blessedly alone amongst the sounds of spraying and splashing water (and your own tormented mind), be silly and dumb with no one standing around to judge you, and focus on yourself and your mental and physical health. Great. But if you're in Pennsylvania — as the tale goes — you can't do one thing that loads of people love to do in the shower to live out their dreams of fame and acclaim: sing.

Or can you? The Keystone lists a bunch of weird things that Pennsylvania supposedly outlaws, including fortune telling for money, buying cars on Sunday, being a felon while playing or running a game of Bingo, using certain fish as bait, and singing in the shower and/or bath. Granted, lots of states have bizarre laws that are mostly holdovers from bygone days, like Connecticut's law about a pickle only being called a pickle if it bounces when dropped (yes, this is true, as KKC Law explains). Maybe the pickle law mattered at a time when folks at farmer's markets didn't want fraudulently rubbery cucumbers mingling with their produce. But now? There's Vlasic.

But singing in the shower and/or bath? What's the harm there besides noise pollution if your neighbor is a godawful singer? Well as it turns out, it's not true; there's no such law. Justia explains that it's just a myth that circulated and somehow gained traction. 

Why oh why would Pennsylvania ever want to deprive its citizens of the joys of pretending that one sings better than they actually do? If you do a cursory search online you'll find lots of articles wondering the same thing. All these articles are perfect abject lessons against doing what humans love to do: knee-jerk react and believe whatever someone says without verifiying the information. Hey, don't blame us — it's just true. 

94.5 PST rolls into "Can you believe it?" territory to talk about the illegality of singing in the bathroom in Pennsylvania, and sites ABC27 news to do so. ABC27 cites nothing, but reads, "If you want to sing but not break the law you can sing in a bedroom, kitchen, outside the bathtub, and many more places." Glenside Local mentions the strangeness of this supposed law, and cites The Keystone to do so — a site we already debunked. Expatsi talks about this topic, too, and goes one step further by rationalizing, "The intent behind this one long ago was to force performers to expose their talent." We're assuming 'talent' is a euphemism for something being exposed in the bathroom. RMU Sentry Media, meanwhile, cheekily says that while singing in the shower is illegal, singing next to it isn't. On and on it goes.

And what do all these article have in common? They're all wrong, they're all citing heresay or incorrect sources, and they're all excellent examples about being careful about assessing information — especially online.

The job of sifting out fact from fiction gets tricky when fact and fiction get mixed together, or facts get improperly understood. Take the "no Bingo if you're a felon" Pennsylvanian law we mentioned The Keystone citing. There really is a law on the books regarding this topic in Bensalem, Pennsylvania's Code of Ordinance, Part II – General Legislation, Chapter 105 – Games of Chance, Section 105-13 – Prohibited Persons: "No distributor nor any person who has been convicted of a felony or of a violation of the Bingo Law or of this chapter or of any comparable state or federal law shall have a pecuniary interest in the operation or proceeds of games of chance." So, does this say a felon isn't allowed to play or operate a game of Bingo? No. It just means that only that a person who's violated laws A or B can't try to make money from a Bingo game. They can play all they want. 

Besides this law and the non-existent banned bathroom singing law, there are other, real, strange Pennsylvanian laws worth citing. For instance, the Pennsylvania Code says that a child's bathroom not be 200 feet from a bathtub, shower, or toilet. Also on the child-related front, Justia tells us that it's a misdemeanor — only a misdemeanor, mind you — if a person "deals in humanity, by trading, bartering, buying, selling, or dealing in infant children." And then there's the no Goldfish, Koi, Common carp, or Comets used as bait while fishing rule, per the Pennsylvania Code.