Birmingham, AL Public Conduct: Skateboarding Rules (2026)

' Both parks sit in the downtown core: Linn Park, at 20th Street and 7th Avenue North, is the city's central civic green, and Kelly Ingram Park, at 5th Avenue and 17th Street North, is the historic civil-rights park adjacent to 16th Street Baptist Church. The ban was added by Ord. No. 96-137 on July 9, 1996, and reaches skateboards, roller skates and 'similar' wheeled items, sweeping in scooters and comparable devices. The prohibition is limited to those two named parks and their abutting sidewalks; it does not restrict skateboarding in other city parks or on ordinary city sidewalks.

A separate, older sidewalk provision, § 4-5-34, independently bans rollerskating (not skateboarding by name) 'on any sidewalk in the loop area of the city,' on any paved sidewalk next to a church during services, and in any zone posted as a quiet or sick zone; that section traces to Code 1964, § 48-35. Read together, the two sections give Birmingham's skateboard and rollerskate restrictions their geographic reach: the two named parks plus their sidewalks under § 4-2-14, and downtown's 'loop' sidewalks plus church and quiet zones for rollerskating under § 4-5-34.

Neither section requires a permit for skateboarding elsewhere in the city, and neither imposes equipment or age requirements; they are location-based bans enforced by Birmingham police.