Gulfport, MS Sidewalk & Pedestrian Rules: Obstruction Rules (2026)

City Code Section 7-11 makes it unlawful for any person to intentionally obstruct or interfere with the normal or ordinary free use and passage of pedestrians on a public sidewalk provided for foot travel, or of vehicles on a public street or highway. The ordinance treats the two forms of obstruction, street and sidewalk, as parallel offenses under a single section, and either is charged as a misdemeanor. The section also addresses a specific real-world exception the council had to carve out: gates placed across public streets leading into subdivisions.

Those gates do not violate Section 7-11 as long as they remain necessary to preserve good order or prevent injury to persons or property, the streets they cross stay fully and equally accessible to every member of the public, and the city's governing authority first makes findings approving the gate's location and other logistics, with those findings spread upon the council minutes. Section 7-11 traces to the 1963 Code Section 23-1 and was amended by Ordinance No. 2439 in 2005, Ordinance No. 2447 later that same year, and most recently by Ordinance No.

3066 on March 2, 2021, which is the gate carve-out. The Mississippi Code sections referenced alongside it, 97-35-23 and 97-35-25, are the state statutes on obstructing public streets and sidewalks that give the city its underlying authority to act here.