State requirements
Bounce house rules by state
Who regulates inflatable rentals where you work, what they require, and which office to call. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, sourced from statutes and state agency pages, with every gap in the research marked as a gap.
Reviewed August 2026
Informational only. Informational only, not legal advice. Amusement-device rules change between legislative sessions, and several of the entries here record changes made in the last three years. The binding authority is the agency named on this page. Confirm the current rule with them before you set up.
There are four answers, and the wrong one costs something different
Most state amusement-ride statutes were written for mechanical rides, and inflatables sit at the seam. Some states name them and regulate them. Some run a busy ride program and exclude them by name in the same breath. Some never mention them, so they fall outside by silence. And some have no program at all, which leaves the county. Reading the wrong group is how an operator ends up either paying for a permit that does not exist or running without one that does.
The group that produces the most wrong answers online is the second. A directory sees that a state inspects amusement rides, lists the agency, and implies the coverage. New Mexico and North Carolina are the sharpest cases in opposite directions: New Mexico is listed by a well-known industry directory as having no regulation while its own department says every inflatable operator in the state needs an annual certificate, and North Carolina removed inflatables from its amusement-device classification in October 2023 while page after page online still describes the old permit. Where a directory and a state agency disagree, believe the agency.
30 jurisdictions
The state regulates inflatables
A state program reaches your units. Expect a permit or registration, an inspection, and a liability minimum.
Most of these states name inflatables in the statute or the rule itself. Kentucky defines an air inflatable device as an object filled with air supplied continuously by an electric motor-driven blower, which is a bounce house and nothing else. Ohio writes inflatable devices into the definition of an amusement ride. Pennsylvania classes an inflatable bounce ride as a Class I ride with its own insurance floor. A handful of others regulate amusement rides in terms that may or may not reach an inflatable, and the honest answer there is that nobody has confirmed it, so those pages say so on their face rather than guessing in either direction.
11 jurisdictions
The state has a ride program that does not reach inflatables
There is a real state ride agency, and inflatables sit outside it. This is the group most often reported wrongly.
This is the trap. Florida runs one of the busiest ride-inspection bureaus in the country and exempts inflatable rides from the section by statute. Georgia lists inflatables in a category of unpowered playground equipment the amusement-ride rules do not reach. California groups inflatable rides with trampolines and ball crawls in an exclusion sentence. North Carolina had a model inflatable definition and a real permitting regime until House Bill 600 removed inflatables from the amusement-device classification, effective 10 October 2023, and almost nothing published online reflects that yet. Directories keep listing the state ride agency next to these states, and a reader who calls that agency will be told they are not the right desk. What binds you here is the venue contract, the county or city fire and special-event permit, and your own insurer.
5 jurisdictions
No state program. The county or city is the only authority
There is no state desk to call. Requirements come from the locality, the venue, and your insurer.
Some of these states have a statute that delegates outright. Arizona requires the operator to hold a written permit issued by the municipality or county rather than by the state. Wyoming requires a local license where a fee is charged and sets a liability floor as a condition of it, while leaving safety inspection to the county to require or not. South Dakota is the strangest of the group: a statute on the books with no state office behind it, which does not make the statute irrelevant, because a plaintiff can still point at it after an incident.
5 jurisdictions
We could not establish the answer
The sources were unreachable. These pages name the office to call and print nothing we did not read.
Five jurisdictions defeated the research pass, and in every case it was the sources rather than the effort: state hosts that returned 403, certificate chains that failed verification, hostnames that no longer resolve, and PDFs that came back as unreadable binary. Two of them matter a great deal. Alabama has long appeared on every list of states with no amusement-ride oversight, and a 2023 statute may have changed that. Mississippi appears on the same lists, and the material we found points the other way. Rather than repeat what everyone else publishes, these pages say what we could not read and name the office that can answer it.
How this was put together
Each entry was built from statutes, administrative codes and state agency pages, read directly wherever the page would open. Where a source refused the request, failed certificate verification or came back as unreadable binary, that is recorded on the page and the claim it would have supported is not made. Numbers that appear only in a document we could not open do not appear here at all, not even hedged. Where a rule is tiered or conditional and the source does not say which tier reaches a commercial inflatable, both tiers print and the choice is left to the agency. The compilation date is stamped on every page, and the binding authority is always named.
If your state changed something after the date stamped above, or an entry reads wrong against a notice you have in hand, tell us and point at the source. A page like this is only worth reading if it gets corrected faster than it decays.
What to do with this
The rule is the first half. These are the second half, and the last two are what most operators are actually looking for when they arrive here.
All 51 jurisdictions
- AlabamaUnresolved. The highest-priority recheck in this file
- AlaskaState-regulated for amusement rides. Inflatable coverage unconfirmed
- ArizonaLocal-only. A state statute exists but delegates permitting to cities and counties, and inflatables are reported to be excluded from it
- ArkansasState-regulated. Inflatables named explicitly
- CaliforniaNo state program. Inflatables are excluded by name from the state ride program
- ColoradoNo state program. Inflatable amusement rides are excluded by statute
- ConnecticutState-regulated, with an explicit carve-out for inflatables leased for private residential use
- DelawareState-regulated
- District of ColumbiaUnresolved. No source we read says anything about inflatables
- FloridaNo state program. Inflatable rides are exempt by statute
- GeorgiaNo state program. Inflatables are excluded by administrative rule
- HawaiiNo state program found for inflatables. The statutory definition appears to reach only mechanically or electrically operated ride devices
- IdahoUnresolved. No Idaho amusement-device statute was located at all
- IllinoisState-regulated. Inflatables named explicitly
- IndianaNo state program. Inflatables are reported to be excluded from the Amusement Device Code
- IowaState-regulated. Inflatables named explicitly
- KansasState-regulated. Inflatable devices are inside the statutory definition
- KentuckyState-regulated. "Air inflatable device" is a defined term with its own fee line
- LouisianaState-regulated. Inflatable amusement devices are named in the statute’s own section headings
- MaineState-regulated for amusement rides. Whether an inflatable is an "amusement ride" is not stated in the section we read
- MarylandState-regulated. Inflatables have their own dedicated chapter of the state code
- MassachusettsState-regulated. Inflatables have their own rule
- MichiganState-regulated for carnival and amusement rides. Inflatable coverage unconfirmed
- MinnesotaState-regulated. A dedicated inflatable amusement equipment registration exists
- MississippiUnresolved. A state program appears to exist and to cover inflatables, which contradicts the widely repeated claim that Mississippi has none
- MissouriState-regulated for a narrow slice of inflatables. Most bounce houses are out; inflatable dry slides over 20 feet are in
- MontanaNo state program found
- NebraskaState-regulated for mechanical rides. Inflatables appear to fall outside the definition
- NevadaLocal-only. No state amusement-ride agency
- New HampshireState-regulated. "Air supported structures" are inside the rule’s scope
- New JerseyState-regulated. Inflatables are defined and separately regulated
- New MexicoState-regulated. Inflatables and bounce houses named explicitly
- New YorkState-regulated for amusement devices, statewide except New York City. Explicit inflatable coverage not confirmed
- North CarolinaNo state program as of October 2023. Inflatables were removed from the amusement-device classification by statute
- North DakotaLocal-only. Affidavits are filed with the city or county
- OhioState-regulated. Inflatable devices are named inside the statutory definition
- OklahomaState-regulated. Inflatables named explicitly, with their own fee line
- OregonState-regulated. The code adopts the ASTM inflatables standard by name
- PennsylvaniaState-regulated. Inflatable bounce rides are named in the regulation’s own class definition
- Rhode IslandNo state program. Air structures, called "moonwalks" in the statute, are excluded
- South CarolinaNo state program. "Air-supported structures" are excluded by statute
- South DakotaLocal-only in practice. A statute exists but there is no state office to administer it
- TennesseeState-regulated. Inflatable devices are named in the unit’s own scope
- TexasState-regulated. Continuous air-flow inflatables are a Class B ride with their own liability line
- UtahNo state program. An inflatable device is excluded from the statutory definition
- VermontUnresolved. The hardest jurisdiction in this file to source
- VirginiaState-regulated by state rule, administered locally. Inflatable amusement devices are named in the regulation
- WashingtonState-regulated. Inflatables named explicitly, including in the fee schedule
- West VirginiaState-regulated. "Inflatable amusement device" is a defined term
- WisconsinState-regulated. "Air pillows" appear inside the amusement-ride definition
- WyomingLocal-only, with a state-mandated insurance floor
Keep the paperwork with the unit
Permits, inspection dates and certificates belong next to the unit they cover, not in a folder. BounceDay keeps each unit’s record with its bookings, so the certificate a venue asks for is one tap away on the delivery. Your checklists are your own templates; the safety standards in them are yours, not ours.