ST. PAUL, Minn. – There won’t be wanton sex in the streets because of the Minnesota Supreme Court decision allowing women to go topless. The attorney for St. Paul-based Gender Justice, Jess Braverman, noted that the Court didn’t overturn any indecent exposure statute. Overt sexual displays in public remain verboten, Bravernman said in a Minnesota Public Radio interview:
“The law still stands. Nothing about the law has really changed. It’s just that courts have clarified how to interpret it, and that clarification is basically that just saying a woman was outside, she exposed her breasts, that alone won’t cut it. There has to be something else.”
The Gender Justice organization had supported the appeal of a Rochester woman who was ticketed in 2014 for going topless outside a gas station. Lower courts had found Eloisa Rubi Plancarte’s mammary exposure was lewd. But the Supreme Court now says, there must be a canal element for such a display to be legally lewd.