It’s usually the other way around, the reasonator they could ticket you for being noisy, but not for emissions. The cat’s are a big deal even though everyone does it (my C5, Nissan and Acura all had at least 1 set of cats removed).
Every state is different, but in many states any removing of a cat (even if it’s un-necessary such as a 3rd cat) is illegal (most shops won’t notice/care, but some will, especially if it throws a CEL from the O2 Sensor). Usually it’s just the fact that they can’t tell which makes it fine.
In VA they would actually do an emissions check and look around the car, so you’d have to disguise the fake cat with some bogus heat shields and an O2 Simulator to avoid the check engine light. The Acura had 3 cats so you could remove the 3rd one without it throwing any lights, but it was still technically an “off road” pipe.