Kauai County, HI Public Conduct: Public Alcohol Use (2026)

Adopted by Ordinance No. 913 in October 2011, Kaua'i County Code § 22-20.1 defines the covered area broadly: the entire parking lot and grounds adjacent to the Historic County Building, County Annex and Lihu'e Civic Center, including front, back and side stairs, landings, ramps, grounds between the buildings, landscaped and lawn areas, internal roadways and the roadways used to enter or leave the lot. Section 22-20.2(a) makes it unlawful to consume intoxicating liquor, defined by reference to Hawai'i Revised Statutes § 281-1, anywhere within those boundaries, and Subsection (b) separately bans possessing any bottle, can or other receptacle containing intoxicating liquor within the same boundaries once it has been opened, had its seal broken, or had its contents partially removed, an open-container rule distinct from the drinking ban itself.

The Department of Public Works and the Department of Parks and Recreation are authorized under § 22-20.3 to post signs at the site informing the public of the prohibitions, though the ban applies whether or not signage is posted. The article sits alongside a companion rule at the same location, § 22-21.2, which separately bans urinating or defecating in the same parking lots and grounds outside a portable toilet or restroom, unless a licensed physician verifies a medical condition prevented compliance. Both offenses under this cluster of civic-center rules are charged as petty misdemeanors, and Kaua'i Police Department officers enforce them alongside general open-container and public-nuisance patrol duties downtown in Lihu'e.