US 'Ugly Laws' that banned disabled people in public lasted until 1974

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

During the late 1860s and until the 1970s, several American cities maintained ugly laws that made it illegal for persons with "unsightly or disgusting" disabilities to appear in public. Some of these laws were called unsightly beggar ordinances.

The goal of these laws sought to preserve community's quality of life and was similar in spirit to current homeowners association regulations and by-laws. The first appearance of the ordinance allegedly occurred in1867 in San Francisco, California. The ordinance seems to have been most welcomed during the 1880s in Western and particularly Midwestern cities with strong, networked cultures of reform, where towns were bound together and with the rest of the nation by railroad ties. Its zone also extended eastward.

The state of Pennsylvania passed a state version of the law in the early 1890s. Some New Yorkers, inspired by Pennsylvania, made an unsuccessful attempt to get a city ordinance passed in 1895. Many states' ugly laws were not repealed until the mid-1970s. Omaha repealed it's ugly law in 1967. Columbus withdrew in 1972. Chicago was the last to repeal the ugly law as late as 1974.