For decades, those who have participated in snowball fights in one Wisconsin city have risked getting in trouble with the law. But that may be about to change.
A 1962 ban on throwing projectiles in Wausau lumps snowballs into the same category as rocks and other items that can cause serious harm. The City Council president says that after recent negative national attention over the rarely used ordinance, maybe it's time to take snowballs off the list of banned projectiles.
“Maybe it's worth giving a look to see if that list could be amended, to mitigate that odd news story that keeps coming up like a bad penny,” City Council President Lisa Rasmussen told the Associated Press.
Wausau police and the mayor even made a video showing officers having a snowball fight. The City Council will consider decriminalizing snowball fights next month.
“A fun snowball fight is a fun snowball fight,” Deputy Chief Matt Barnes says in the video, “and that’s not something (for which) we enforce this ordinance.”