Minnesota’s Supreme Court has ruled that it is legal for women to go about in public, topless. Eloisa Plancarte was observed walking around a gas station property, naked from the waist up. Someone called the police, and she explained to the officer that she is a stripper. Plus, “I think Catholic girls do it all the time.” I don’t understand that reference. Also, the officer found cocaine in her purse, which could explain Plancarte’s behavior, except that she has been observed doing the same thing on multiple other occasions.
Minnesota law prohibits “willfully and lewdly expos[ing] the person’s body, or the private
parts thereof,” and a woman’s breasts are evidently considered private parts, since there is an exception for breastfeeding. The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously held that, while there was no doubt about the facts, Plancarte couldn’t be convicted under that statute because she didn’t do anything “lewd.” She just walked around half naked. Most of us might have thought that this was lewd enough, but the Court disagreed.
So it is now legal in Minnesota for a woman to go about topless, as long as she doesn’t do anything “lewd” in addition. Two of the Court’s seven justices wanted to go farther and hold that breasts are not private parts. The concurring opinion includes brilliant legal analysis like this:
Interpreting “private parts” to include female–and not male–breasts would lead to the continued stigmatization of female breasts as inherently sexual and reinforce the sexual objectification of women. As other courts have recognized, the idea that female breasts are primarily sexual is rooted in stereotypes.
The concurring opinion also suggested that the Minnesota law could be void for vagueness:
[A] binary approach to breasts fails to recognize the more nuanced physical realities of human bodies, whether they are intersex, transgender, nonbinary, or breast cancer survivors. Would a transgender man be prohibited from exposing his chest? What about a transgender woman who has had top surgery? Where do the chests of intersex and nonbinary persons fit within this dichotomy? And how do we treat the exposed chest of a breast cancer survivor who has had a mastectomy?
Such is 21st century jurisprudence. If our civilization is saved from collapse, it will not be on account of our courts. Rather because, in this instance, there are virtually no women who want to walk about the park or the grocery store, topless. Just as there are virtually no women who want to invade men’s showers or compete in men’s sports. Common sense hangs on, if only by its fingernails.
