The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that women can “lewdly expose” their bodies so long as that exposure is not of a sexual nature. This comes after Eloisa Rubi Plancarte, a self-professed stripper, was convicted of a misdemeanor charge in of indecent exposure in December 2022 in Olmstead County. She appealed her charge months thereafter, and finally got her charge reversed in April 30 by the state’s Supreme Court.
The case facts describe the interaction between police and Plancarte in 2021 that led to her initial conviction:
“The Rochester Police Department received a report that a woman was walking around a gas station parking lot with her breasts exposed. An officer responded to the call and saw Plancarte in the parking lot with her breasts exposed. The officer recognized Plancarte from two encounters earlier that week. During those encounters, the officer saw Plancarte exposing her underwear on one occasion, and her breasts and her underwear on another occasion.”
The case facts further describe the incident:
“The officer stopped Plancarte and asked her why she kept exposing herself. Plancarte replied, ‘I think Catholic girls do it all the time.’ Plancarte then worried about how she would get home and stated, ‘I dance at the biker club. I’m a stripper.’ The officer said, ‘Well, you can’t strip in the middle of public.’ Plancarte responded, ‘Yeah, but they should account for me at the club, shouldn’t they?”
After this exchange, Plancarte was arrested. The officer searched through her purse and found a vial filled with cocaine.
The court based the reversal of its initial ruling based on the following set of notions comprising its opinion. The main conclusion was that the lewd element defining indecent exposure must entail explicitly sexual conduct:
- “To ‘lewdly’ expose oneself in violation of Minnesota Statutes section a person must engage in conduct of a sexual nature.”
- “The State did not present evidence sufficient to prove that the appellant ‘lewdly’ exposed her body, or the private parts thereof. Because the record does not show that the appellant engaged in conduct of a sexual nature.”
Judge Sarah Henesy declared in her opinion that the interpretation of “private parts” to only include female breasts and not male “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.”
Henesy also clarified “that the legislature cannot regulate when breasts may be exposed in public.” The ruling only concerns a woman’s breasts and not other “private parts.”
