Amarillo, TX Public Conduct: Aggressive Panhandling (2026)

Amarillo does not have a stand-alone 'aggressive panhandling' ordinance. Its narrowest, currently-active restriction sits in Sec. 16-3-313(c) of the Traffic Code's pedestrian article: a person cannot stand on or near a roadway to solicit a ride, a donation, a job, or business from someone inside a vehicle. That single subsection sits among related roadway-walking rules: pedestrians must use a sidewalk where one is provided instead of walking the adjacent road (Sec. 16-3-313(a)), must walk facing traffic on the left shoulder where no sidewalk exists (Sec.

16-3-313(b)), and cannot cross or walk freeway lanes at all (Sec. 16-3-313(d)). Amarillo once had a broader Sec. 10-3-41 addressing 'soliciting in street,' dating to Code 1960 § 14-1 and amended repeatedly through 2020, but the City Council repealed it outright by Ord. No. 8119, § 2, adopted March 12, 2024, leaving Sec. 16-3-313(c)'s roadway-solicitation rule as the operative restriction on panhandling from traffic. Separately, the Code's disorderly-conduct chapter still criminalizes soliciting for prostitution near a public place, but that provision addresses sex work, not general begging or panhandling for money. Anyone soliciting pedestrians on a sidewalk, rather than drivers stopped in a roadway, falls outside Sec. 16-3-313(c) entirely.