Henrico County, VA Public Conduct: Loitering Rules (2026)

County Code § 13-22, "Obstructing free passage," defines loitering broadly: standing around, remaining, or parking and remaining parked in a public place or any place open to the public, while engaging in prohibited conduct, and it extends to a group or crowd gathered together doing the same. "Place open to the public" reaches beyond government property to privately owned shopping centers, malls, places of worship, cemeteries, places of amusement, and the elevators, lobbies, halls and corridors of stores, offices or apartment buildings that the public is invited into.

"Public place" covers streets, roads, highways, alleys, sidewalks, parks, playgrounds, public buildings and grounds, and school property. The ordinance makes it unlawful to loiter in three specific ways: unreasonably hindering, impeding or obstructing the free passage of pedestrians or vehicles; threatening or doing physical harm to another person; or threatening or doing physical harm to public or private property. The section states its own purpose up front, to keep rights-of-way, buildings and public facilities passable while preserving First Amendment rights to speech and assembly, and it expressly carves out lawful assembly, picketing, parades and processions from the prohibition.

2-926, which authorizes localities to regulate loitering, and it traces back to a 1980 code provision renumbered through the 1995 and 2010 recodifications before its current 2007 amendment (Ord. No. 1099).