Decatur, GA Public Conduct: Public Alcohol Use (2026)

City Code § 6-22(a) makes it unlawful to drink any alcoholic or other intoxicating beverage, or to possess an unsealed or opened container of one, at any public place in the City of Decatur, Georgia, unless a special permit has been issued by the city commission or the conduct falls under the restaurant-district exception in § 6-25. Subsection (b) separately bars drinking or possessing alcohol on city property used as a park, playground, or school, and subsection (c) bars drinking in any automobile on city streets, whether moving or parked.

The one built-in carve-out is § 6-25's restaurant district rule: a patron may carry an open container purchased from a participating restaurant onto the streets, sidewalks and public plazas inside a designated restaurant district, but only during the ordinance's defined open container hours, and the container must be one of the restaurant's approved containers. Participating restaurants may not let a patron remove an open container after 12:00 midnight, and they must still comply with all state alcohol law. This structure means Decatur's rule is not a blanket downtown carve-out: it is a citywide ban on public drinking with a single, restaurant-district exception tied to a specific business's license, not a general license for anyone walking the square to carry a drink outside. A person outside a restaurant district, or outside the posted hours, is still violating § 6-22(a) regardless of where in the city they are.