The last time someone was charged with adultery in a United States civilian court appears to have been in 2010, when a woman in New York was arrested under the state’s 1907 adultery statute and later had the charge dropped as part of a plea deal. In the military, charges are far more recent: an Air Force major general pleaded guilty to adultery at a court-martial in June 2024. Civilian prosecutions have been functionally dead for decades, even though roughly 16 states still have adultery on the books as a crime.
The 2010 New York Case and What Came Before It
The 2010 arrest in New York is the most recent documented civilian adultery charge. The woman was booked under a state statute dating to 1907, and the charge was dismissed through a plea agreement before it ever reached a verdict.
Working backward from there, the trail thins out fast. In 1997, police in a Chicago suburb arrested a couple under Illinois’s adultery misdemeanor statute, read them their Miranda rights, and booked them. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office declined to prosecute, treating the arrest itself as the oddity.
For the last civilian adultery case that actually produced a conviction, you have to go back to Commonwealth v. Stowell, decided by Massachusetts’s highest court in 1983.1Justia. Commonwealth vs. Judith Stowell, 389 Mass. 171 More than four decades have passed since a civilian court in this country convicted anyone of adultery.
The June 2024 Military Court-Martial
Military law tells a different story than civilian law, and it’s where the most recent adultery charge of any kind was brought. In June 2024, Major General Phillip Stewart, the Air Force’s former pilot training commander, pleaded guilty to adultery and dereliction of duty at a court-martial. He faced a potential reprimand, fine, dismissal, forfeiture of pay, and up to 18 months of confinement.
The authority for that prosecution is Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which makes extramarital sexual conduct a court-martial offense when it prejudices good order and discipline or brings discredit on the armed forces.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 934 Art. 134 – General Article That “good order and discipline” requirement is the critical difference from any civilian statute. The military isn’t criminalizing private morality on its own; it’s treating the affair as a disciplinary matter that affects unit cohesion and the chain of command. For senior officers especially, adultery charges often accompany other misconduct allegations, as they did in the Stewart case.
Why Civilian Prosecutors Stopped Bringing These Cases
Several reinforcing factors have made civilian adultery charges almost unthinkable in practice.
Proving adultery beyond a reasonable doubt is extraordinarily hard. Prosecutors would need direct evidence like explicit messages, photographs, or witness testimony about conduct that typically happens in private, and gathering that evidence often means surveillance that creates its own legal problems. Several state statutes make it harder still by requiring the conduct to be “open and notorious,” meaning the affair must be public enough that the community knows about it.3Illinois General Assembly. 720 ILCS 5/11-35 – Adultery A discreet affair wouldn’t qualify under those laws even if someone wanted to prosecute it.
Then there’s the constitutional problem. The 2003 Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas struck down a Texas sodomy law and established that the government cannot criminalize private consensual sexual conduct between adults based on moral disapproval alone. The Court hasn’t ruled directly on adultery statutes, but the reasoning casts a long shadow. Courts in Virginia and North Carolina have already relied on Lawrence to strike down fornication statutes, and legal scholars have argued that adultery, as consensual sex between adults, falls within the same zone of sexual privacy. A prosecutor who brought an adultery charge would almost certainly face a constitutional challenge the statute would struggle to survive.
Selective enforcement adds another layer. When a morals statute is prosecuted only sporadically, the choice of who gets charged sits almost entirely with police and prosecutors, which invites targeting based on race, gender, or personal grudges. Courts have recognized that this kind of discretion raises equal protection concerns.
Finally, district attorneys answer to voters. Spending resources investigating someone’s affair while violent crime cases wait in line isn’t a politically defensible use of a prosecutor’s office. The statutes sit on the books because nobody enforces them, and nobody enforces them because enforcement makes no sense.
States That Still Classify Adultery as a Crime
As of 2026, adultery remains a criminal offense in roughly 16 states. Three treat it as a felony; the rest classify it as a misdemeanor. None of them actively prosecute.
The felony states and their maximum penalties:
- Michigan: felony, up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.4Michigan Legislature. MCL 750.30 – Adultery
- Wisconsin: Class I felony, up to three and a half years and a maximum fine of $10,000.5Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Code 944.16 – Adultery
- Oklahoma: Class D1 felony, up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $500, or both.6Justia. Oklahoma Statutes 21-872 – Punishment for Adultery
Misdemeanor penalties vary widely. Illinois classifies adultery as a Class A misdemeanor but only when the conduct is “open and notorious.”3Illinois General Assembly. 720 ILCS 5/11-35 – Adultery Florida requires that a person “live in an open state of adultery” before its second-degree misdemeanor applies.7Florida Legislature. Florida Statutes Title XLVI Chapter 798 – Adultery Maryland sits at the opposite extreme, with a fixed fine of $10.8Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Criminal Law 10-501 – Adultery Other misdemeanor states include Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Recent Repeals Shrinking the List
Several states have taken adultery off their books in recent years. Massachusetts repealed its statute in 2018 as part of a broader reproductive health bill. Idaho followed in 2022, with lawmakers describing the law as unenforceable in the bill’s statement of purpose; the repeal took effect July 1 of that year. Minnesota repealed its law in 2023. Most recently, Governor Hochul signed New York’s repeal in November 2024, ending the 1907 statute under which the 2010 arrest had been made.
Each repeal passed with broad bipartisan support. No state has moved in the other direction during the same period.
Where Adultery Still Carries Legal Consequences
Criminal prosecution is effectively extinct on the civilian side, but adultery can still cost someone money and affect their legal standing in a few concrete ways. A reader concluding that adultery no longer has any legal weight would be mistaken.
In divorce proceedings, a significant number of states still allow adultery as a “fault” ground, and proving it can influence how a court divides property or awards spousal support. Some states reduce alimony to a spouse who committed adultery or increase it for the wronged spouse; others treat adultery as relevant mainly when marital assets were spent on the affair. There is no uniform rule, and family courts have been moving away from weighing fault in financial decisions.
A handful of states, including Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah, still allow “heartbalm” lawsuits against the third party in an affair. Alienation of affection and criminal conversation claims produce real money judgments. In 2011, a Raleigh judge awarded $30 million to the ex-wife of a trucking company owner in a North Carolina alienation of affection case.
An affair can also jeopardize a federal security clearance. The government’s adjudicative guidelines flag sexual behavior that makes someone vulnerable to coercion or blackmail, and an extramarital affair fits that description, particularly when a spouse or employer doesn’t know about it. Investigators aren’t making moral judgments; they’re assessing whether someone can be pressured into betraying classified information.
The direction is unmistakable. Four states have repealed their adultery statutes since 2018, no state has strengthened its law in that time, and the constitutional pressure from Lawrence v. Texas grows harder to ignore the longer these statutes sit idle. The 2010 New York case may well end up as the last civilian adultery charge the country ever sees.