Gardena, CA Noise Ordinances: Barking Dogs (2026)

Chapter 8.36 of the Gardena Municipal Code is the city's general noise ordinance, and Section 8.36.070 lists specific prohibited acts in addition to the chapter's underlying ban on loud or unusual noise that disturbs a neighborhood. Subsection 5, titled Animals and Birds, prohibits owning, possessing, or harboring any animal or bird which frequently or for long duration, howls, barks, mews, squawks, or makes other sounds which create a noise disturbance across a residential or commercial real property line. The chapter's definitions section, 8.36.020, defines noise disturbance broadly as any noise that endangers health or safety, annoys or disturbs reasonable persons of normal sensitivities, or violates the numeric exterior or interior noise standards in Sections 8.36.040 and 8.36.050.

Because the barking-animal rule is a prohibited act rather than a decibel-limit standard, an inspector or officer does not need a sound meter reading to cite it, unlike exterior noise standard violations that require the measurement procedure in Section 8.36.060. Enforcement sits in Section 8.36.090: any person violating or permitting the provisions of this chapter shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor. That same section lets the city treat a chronic noise source as a public nuisance subject to abatement by injunction or restraining order, and lets the city recover abatement costs through a lien against the property.

The rule applies citywide regardless of zone under Section 8.36.090's misdemeanor penalty, with no numeric decibel threshold required for owners of chronically noisy animals or birds.