How did U.S. state penalties for bestiality change between 2010 and 2023, and which states raised offenses to felonies?
Executive summary
Between 2010 and 2023 U.S. state law on bestiality moved steadily toward broader criminalization and stiffer penalties: a growing number of states added or modernized prohibitions (including bans on photographing sexual acts with animals) and several jurisdictions upgraded classifications from misdemeanors to felonies, but the precise list of every state that raised an offense to a felony is not fully documented in the provided reporting. The available snapshot data show a substantive increase in states with antibestiality statutes by the mid‑2010s and individual 2023 legislative efforts to make bestiality a felony, while other sources claim that most states now classify the offense as a felony [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. The baseline in and around 2010: patchwork laws, many misdemeanors
At the start of the 2010s the legal landscape was highly uneven: some states had long‑standing bestiality statutes tucked into cruelty or “crimes against nature” codes, and many of those laws still treated the offense as a misdemeanor rather than a felony — for example, Arkansas’s 2010 code explicitly classified bestiality as a Class A misdemeanor [5], and Alaska in 2010 amended its cruelty statutes to include sexual conduct with animals as a criminalized act [1].
2. Mid‑decade consolidation: more states written into the books, more felonies reported
Scholarly review and compilations from the mid‑2010s documented a clear change: by 2014 only 31 states had specific statutes criminalizing bestiality, and among those 31 states 16 imposed felonies while 15 imposed misdemeanors — a metric that shows both expansion of statutory coverage and a split on penalty severity [2]. Animal law compilations from legal centers also note that many recent enactments added modern provisions — notably prohibitions on photographing or filming sexual acts with animals — reflecting legislative responses to pornography and digital evidence concerns [1].
3. The narrative from advocacy and secondary sources: push to make bestiality uniformly a felony
Animal‑welfare and legal advocacy groups pushed through the 2010s and early 2020s for uniform felony treatment and for sex‑offender registration triggers in some statutes; commentary pieces and legal explainers capture that advocacy and the debate over felony versus misdemeanor classification, with proponents citing links to other violent crimes and opponents warning about lifelong consequences of felony records [6]. Commercial and summary sites have presented the contemporary picture as one in which most states now criminalize bestiality and that many classify it as a felony — for example, one compendium asserts that 46 states have specific laws and names states such as California, Texas, Florida and New York as felony jurisdictions [4] [7] — but these summaries should be treated as secondary compilations rather than definitive law lists.
4. 2020–2023: continued legislative tightening and high‑profile proposals
Legislative activity continued into 2023 with bills explicitly elevating bestiality to felony status; for instance, a 2023 New Mexico Senate bill (SB 215) sought to make sexual abuse of animals a fourth‑degree felony on first offense and escalate penalties for repeat offenders — a concrete example of the trend of upgrading penalties in recent sessions [3]. The broader reporting shows a pattern rather than a single national conversion: some states were modernizing existing cruelty statutes to capture sexual conduct, others were creating stand‑alone felony provisions, and advocates continued to press for uniform felony classification [1] [6].
5. What can be stated with confidence and what remains uncertain
It can be stated with confidence from the provided material that: (a) by 2014 statutory coverage of bestiality had expanded to at least 31 states with about half of those imposing felony penalties [2]; (b) through the 2010s states added modern elements like bans on filming and provisions connecting convictions to sex‑offender registration in some jurisdictions [1]; and (c) in 2023 legislative proposals continued to seek felony upgrades, exemplified by New Mexico’s SB 215 [3]. What cannot be confidently enumerated from these sources alone is the definitive, state‑by‑state list of which jurisdictions upgraded their classifications from misdemeanor to felony between 2010 and 2023; the reporting includes aggregate counts and some named examples (e.g., California, Texas, Florida, New York cited as felony states in a secondary summary) but does not furnish a complete, sourced timeline of each state’s change [2] [4].