The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled last week that a women being topless or otherwise exposing her bare breasts doesn’t inherently qualify as “lewd” behavior under the current Minnesota statute. The ruling effectively overturns a Court of Appeals decision against a woman who was arrested and cited with a misdemeanor in 2021 after she was observed “walking around a gas station parking lot with her breasts exposed.”
According to the original court case, the woman had exposed her breasts in an officer’s presence at least two other times in the weeks leading up to the arrest, and when asked why, she replied “I think Catholic girls do it all the time.” The arresting officer also noted that a vial of cocaine was discovered in her purse
The woman was charged with a misdemeanor count of indecent exposure for willfully and lewdly exposing her private parts, but she moved to have that charge dropped, arguing that breasts are not “private parts.” Additionally, she argued that “the exposure of breasts, without an additional showing, is not ‘lewd,'” noting that the state’s statute on indecent exposure was “unconstitutionally vague.”
Minnesota Supreme Court To The Rescue
The district court found the woman guilty on all charges, calling her exposure “legally obscene.” The ruling was also upheld in the Court of Appeals. However, the woman and her legal team took the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court, who agreed with her.
In the majority opinion, written by Justice Karl Procaccini, the Minnesota Supreme Court sided with the defendant, ruling that in order for the exposure to be considered “lewd,” the person would need to be involved in “conduct of a sexual nature.” Justice Procaccnini went on to write that the state “did not present evidence sufficient to prove that the appellant ‘lewdly’ exposed her ‘body, or the private parts thereof.'”
Justice Sarah Hennesy weighed in with a concurrent option, noting that “the definition of ‘private parts’ remains ambiguous,” and she suggested that future cases might still require wrestling with the subjectivity of what conduct an individual would believe is sexual in nature.
“Undoubtedly, reasonable minds will differ in determining what constitutes engaging in ‘conduct of a sexual nature’ when breasts are exposed,” she wrote. “For example, if a woman exposes her breast while dancing, is she engaged in conduct of a sexual nature? How do we know that such conduct is sexual? Does the determination depend on the way she is dancing?”
Despite raising this concern in her concurrent option, Hennesy noted that punishing non-sexual toplessness from women and not men would create a major double standard.
“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,” she wrote. “As other courts have recognized, the idea that female breasts are primarily sexual is rooted in stereotypes.”
Like many other acts that could be punished as a crime in Minnesota, you really need to get in the mind of the individual to discern their intent. A free spirit choosing to go without a shirt should not be punished like someone who exposes their breasts in public with sexually-charged intent. Obviously it’s tough to know what an individual is thinking in the moment, but it appears clear that the woman at the center of this story was certainly not exposing her chest as a way to sexually curry favor with the officer, and therefore the act did not meet the definition of “lewd” under the current statute.
We’ll see if any changes to the law are made in the near future, but this seems like a very well-reasoned argument made by the Minnesota Supreme Court, and we praise them for actually looking into the individual facts of the case and applying the law to the situation.
If you need assistance fighting a criminal charge, reach out to Avery and the team at Appelman Law Firm today at (952) 224-2277.
