These Are The States With Bans On Leaving Your Dog In A Hot Car

We love our furry friends here at Jalopnik, which is why we must insist you do not ever every leave your babies in the car for more than like, ten minutes top. There's a lot of good reasons for this: parking brake related hi-jinx, slobbering on the windows, and because your car can get very hot very fast, especially on a summer day. It's such an obvious danger that 32 states ban drivers from leaving their dogs in hot cars, or they limit the civil liabilities of folks who break windows to rescue pets. 

Personally, I'm all for a little property damage in the name of saving a puppy, but that's me. It can be a scary decision to interfere with someone's property to save a life. Cars are the second most expensive items most people purchase in their lifetimes, and no one takes too kindly to a sudden repair bill. But it is one of those moral decisions that will make or break you as a person. All watching body cam videos has taught me is that misdemeanors aren't that big a deal. 

However, if you do take the hero's path and decide to save a life, you should definitely take a close look at what your state says about rescuing dogs from hot cars so you can live to smash another day. Or, at least, avoid getting sued by an insurance company. 

There are some limits to what folks can do for trapped animals even in states with bans. Michigan State University has a comprehensive list of states and their specific laws regarding animals in cars that is a great resource to use, but the specific states with laws about pets being left in cars include:

• Arizona
• California
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Illinois
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Minnesota
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New York
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Rhode Island
• South Dakota
• Vermont
• Washington
• West Virginia

 States also differ in their definition of what an animal unattended or in distress looks like. Recently, 14 states made it legal for citizens to get directly involved in breaking open car windows: 

• Arizona
• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Florida
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Massachusetts
• Ohio
• Oregon
• Tennessee
• Vermont
• Wisconsin

In other states, bystanders are required to wait for first responders to do the smashing. Those also have a lot of caveats. Arizona, for example, allows citizens to break into cars but only if the person is acting in good faith that an animal is in severe distress, that the door of the car is definitely locked, they don't use any additional force (say, smashing all the window to teach the jerk a lesson) and they have already called law enforcement.

The states that don't ban the practice of leaving dogs in hot cars are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. It's a weird mix of states, but most of them are large agricultural states, where your dog is more like a coworker who sometimes has to wait in the car. Outliers, like Alaska and Michigan, probably haven't had to worry too much about temperatures in cars killing pets, but climate change is going to change that attitude eventually. 

But to say that these states don't ban leaving your dog in the car doesn't mean they are animal haters. These states don't necessarily ban folks from rescuing dogs from hot cars, they just don't have laws on their books specifically protecting rescuers from civil or criminal prosecution in this event. It's a case by case base and some states that do not have specific laws banning leaving pets in cars will still prosecute irresponsible owners via animal cruelty laws, such as the Texas case of Lopez v. State. Michigan, meanwhile, advises folks to call the cops.