A Minnesota lawmaker wants to make it legal for women to go topless in public after a resident was sentenced to jail for "indecent exposure" related to uncovered breasts.
"This to me seems really wrong," Minnesota House Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura told The Star Tribune regarding the conviction. "Particularly now, as we as a society are thinking differently about gender and gender identity, I think this law feels very antiquated."
Sencer-Mura, a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, admitted that her proposal would likely not be heard this year, but she hopes it will spark widespread discussions on shifts in gender identity and expression.
Eloisa Plancarte was sentenced to 90 days in jail following an arrest by Rochester police in 2021, who responded to a call that a woman was walking around a convenience store parking lot with her breasts out.
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Plancarte appealed the conviction and claimed it violated her constitutional right to equal protection under the law. She noted that men would not be charged if their chests were exposed in public. The Minnesota Court of Appeals later voted 2-1 to uphold the decision.
In the motion to deny the appeal, Judge Kevin G. Ross referenced a nearly 40-year-old decision that upheld a conviction for a woman who was seen sunbathing topless in Minneapolis Park.
The dissenting voice on the case was Judge Diane B. Bratvold, a woman, who said the decision "raises more questions about criminal conduct than it clarifies."
She also questioned whether it would be illegal for a transgender man who did not have breast removal surgery to be exposed in public. Judge Jon Schmidt, who upheld the conviction, also expressed concern about what the decision meant for transgender individuals.
Sencer-Mura, who has co-authored the proposed amendment with fellow Democrat Rep. Brion Curran, told the media that current laws allow too much flexibility for officers when it comes to a suspect's gender identity.
"If law enforcement believes that someone identifies as a female, then they're going to treat them differently if they have their shirt off than they would someone that they perceive to be a male," Sencer-Mura said. "As we have a shifting understanding of gender, that law just doesn't make sense anymore."
Minnesota law currently defines indecent exposure as an incident where someone "willfully and lewdly exposes the person's body, or the private parts thereof."
