Which U.S. states still lacked explicit bestiality statutes as of 2023 and what legislative changes closed those gaps?
Executive summary
By the end of 2023, the national patchwork that once left several U.S. jurisdictions without explicit criminal statutes against sexual conduct with animals had been largely closed: reporting from the Animal Legal Defense Fund and related law tables shows that every state except West Virginia had an explicit ban on bestiality by the close of 2023, with New Mexico and the District of Columbia adding explicit prohibitions that year and Connecticut tightening language to close a prosecutorial loophole [1] [2]. Earlier coverage that listed Wyoming, Hawaii, New Mexico and West Virginia among holdouts reflects the state of play before a wave of 2022–2023 legislative fixes [3] [4].
1. A decades‑old patchwork, and why it mattered
The United States historically regulated bestiality unevenly—many prohibitions are embedded in older cruelty or “crime against nature” statutes that vary in language, severity and enforceability—so some jurisdictions lacked a clear, modern criminal statute specifically addressing sexual contact with animals, complicating prosecutions and creating perceived loopholes that advocates called to close [2] [5]. Animal welfare organizations and legal scholars have long documented that patchwork, noting both differences in misdemeanor vs. felony treatment across states and the practical problem that obscenity, child‑protection or generic cruelty laws don’t always fit charges of sexual abuse of animals [2] [4].
2. The last holdouts tracked in recent reporting
By 2023, credible compilations of state criminal codes and advocacy reports converged on a small number of jurisdictions that had only indirect or no explicit statutory prohibitions: West Virginia was repeatedly identified as the lone state without an explicit bestiality ban as of late 2023, while New Mexico and the District of Columbia enacted explicit laws in 2023 to remove ambiguity; Connecticut passed clarifying language to close a loophole that impeded prosecutions [1] [2]. That assessment aligns with the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s 2023 year‑end review, which singled out West Virginia as the one remaining state without an explicit prohibition [1].
3. How 2023 legislation changed the map
The legislative activity in 2023 that mattered most was twofold: first, jurisdictions that historically lacked explicit language—New Mexico and the District of Columbia—moved to make sexual abuse of animals its own crime, thereby removing reliance on ancillary laws like general cruelty or obscenity statutes; second, some states with older statutes revised wording to plug gaps that defense attorneys had exploited, as Connecticut did [1] [6]. Local press reporting on New Mexico’s proposed bills in 2023 framed those measures as creating standalone offenses with graduated penalties and sex‑offender registration in some drafts, illustrating the policy shift from treating such acts as collateral cruelty violations to treating them as discrete sexual‑abuse crimes [6].
4. What earlier lists got wrong — and why the record shifted
Popular‑media lists from around 2021–2022 that named Wyoming, Hawaii, New Mexico and West Virginia as “legal” or lacking specific bans reflected the legal landscape before a flurry of state reforms beginning in the early 2020s; those pieces capture a transitional moment but are out of date for assessing the post‑2023 map [3] [4]. State legislative calendars and advocacy trackers reveal an intense period of statute‑making driven by high‑profile prosecutions and advocacy campaigns, producing rapid change in a few states—hence discrepancies between older reportage and 2023 compilations [4] [7].
5. Limits of available reporting and remaining open questions
The sources consulted provide a clear consensus that West Virginia remained the only state without an explicit bestiality statute as of the end of 2023, and that New Mexico and the District of Columbia enacted explicit prohibitions that year while states such as Connecticut amended language to close prosecutorial loopholes [1] [2] [6]. However, these sources do not provide exhaustive bill‑text comparisons for every jurisdiction or a day‑by‑day legislative timeline, so they cannot alone confirm the precise effective dates, penalty ranges in every new statute, or whether any pending local ordinances also played a role; a review of individual state statutes and official legislative histories would be required to fill those technical gaps [2] [1].