By Tim Binnall
Psychics, tarot readers, and soothsayers of all stripes in an Ohio town are now free to practice their craft without having to obtain a license after community officials repealed a decades-old law concerning fortune telling. According to a local media report, the odd ordinance was struck down at a meeting of the Orange Village Council on Wednesday evening. "This is a relic that's been sitting in our code and other codes for longer than I’ve been alive," explained 60-year-old official Jim Boyle. To that end, the 1963 law declared that "no person not legally licensed to do so shall represent himself or herself to be an astrologer, fortuneteller, clairvoyant or palmister."
Over twenty years later, in 1984, the village passed an amendment to the ordinance that included a penalty for violating the law: a $250 fine and/or a 30-day jail sentence for "each day during or on which a violation occurs or continues." Believing the regulation to be antiquated, if not constitutionally questionable, town officials felt comfortable ending the onerous fortune-telling restriction. "You can't ban Tarot card readers or things like that," Boyle mused, noting that the law required would-be soothsayers to obtain their license through the state, which stopped regulating psychics in 1974.
At the meeting, the community's law director, Stephen Byron, eased any concerns that some skeptical council members might have by stressing that "by repealing this, you're not endorsing that fortune telling is legitimate." He went on to echo Boyle's issues with the lack of an actual "licensing process," fittingly calling the ordinance "illusory." Rather than being overturned because someone sought to set up shop as a soothsayer in the community and challenged the provision, the repeal came about as part of an effort to eradicate longstanding village laws deemed to be "relics." Orange is the latest community to strike down fortune-telling regulations following similar decisions in West Virginia, Virginia, and Michigan over the last few years.