When did Arizona’s pool barrier statute take effect, and why does the date decide whether a 48-inch fence is legal?
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A.R.S. 36-1681 took effect June 1, 1991. It was added by Laws 1990, Chapter 404 (H.B. 2240), which carried no emergency clause and set its own delayed date in section 2 of the act. The date matters because a local 48-inch barrier ordinance is exempt from the 5-foot state standard only if it was enacted before that day.
Arizona’s residential pool barrier statute is A.R.S. 36-1681, in Title 36, Chapter 13, Article 7, Pool Safety. It was added by Laws 1990, Chapter 404, enacting House Bill 2240 in the 2nd Regular Session of the 39th Legislature. The act carried no emergency clause. Section 2 of the act set a delayed effective date in its own words: section 36-1681, Arizona Revised Statutes, as added by this act, is effective from and after June 1, 1991.
The general effective date for the 1990 regular session was September 27, 1990, ninety days after sine die. That general date is the one people reach for, and it is the wrong one here, because Chapter 404 set its own.
The date is load bearing, not trivia. Subsection (B)(1) requires a barrier of at least 5 feet, measured on the exterior side. Two exemptions let a local jurisdiction run a lower number and they are not interchangeable. (D)(5) exempts political subdivisions that enacted a swimming pool barrier ordinance before the effective date of the article, and attaches no stringency requirement at all. (D)(6) exempts political subdivisions that adopted ordinances after that date, but only if the ordinance is equal to or more stringent than the statute.
Forty-eight inches is less stringent than 5 feet. A 48-inch local requirement therefore cannot stand under (D)(6). It can only stand under (D)(5), which means the jurisdiction’s original barrier ordinance has to predate June 1, 1991.
Six of the thirty authorities having jurisdiction in Pima, Pinal, Cochise and Santa Cruz counties enforce 48 inches, including the City of Tucson and unincorporated Pima County. This project has not been able to date either jurisdiction’s original barrier ordinance, because neither code’s published history notes name one. Pima County’s most promising candidate is Ordinance 1990-62, which repealed and replaced Chapter 15.24, the spa and pool code; the disposition table gives no adoption date, and the ordinance itself sits in the Clerk of the Board’s records system. Tucson’s Article IX, Swimming Pool and Spa Code, dates only to Ordinance 11590 in October 2018; before that the barrier rules lived inside the adopted building code and its amendment exhibits, which the codified text does not reproduce.
What this means in practice, stated plainly. Forty-eight inches is the height the building department measures to, and a pool built to 48 inches in Tucson or unincorporated Pima County passes inspection. Whether that local ordinance is itself exempt from the state statute is a separate question that turns on a 1991 date and has not been confirmed either way. Anyone publishing a flat assertion that 48 inches is state-law compliant in Tucson is asserting something they have not checked. Sixty inches removes the question entirely and is the safe design height anywhere in Southern Arizona.
Correction. Widely repeated summaries that quote (D)(5) and (D)(6) as a single exemption conditioned on the local ordinance being equal to or more stringent. Only (D)(6) carries that condition. (D)(5) carries none.
Important. No published Arizona appellate decision and no Attorney General opinion construing (D)(5) or (D)(6) could be located in free sources. The enactment dates of the original Tucson and unincorporated Pima County barrier ordinances are open items, each closable by a records request to the respective clerk.
Authority: Laws 1990, Ch. 404, sec. 2 (H.B. 2240); A.R.S. 36-1681(D)(5), (D)(6). Verified 2026-09-12. Primary source. Evidence grade: MEASURED. Read directly from an authoritative geographic or recorded source.