Blaine bans topfreedom to undo Minnesota Supreme Court ruling
A Minneapolis suburb passes a local ordinance explicitly targeting a decision topfreedom advocates celebrated as a legal step forward
A Minneapolis suburb has passed a local ordinance banning female topfreedom in public—a direct response to a Minnesota Supreme Court decision that naturists and topfreedom advocates celebrated as a modest but meaningful legal victory.
On May 4, the Blaine City Council voted to update its nudity ordinance to explicitly include female breasts, defining nudity as the exposure of “the female breast below a point immediately above the top of the areola.” The move came after Ward 2 Council Member Leslie Larson raised concerns about the city’s public beach.
The ordinance is a workaround. In April 2025, the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously reversed the indecent exposure conviction of Eloisa Rubi Plancarte, a Rochester woman cited for walking through a gas station parking lot with her breasts exposed. Writing for the court, Justice Karl Procaccini concluded that “lewd” exposure requires conduct of a sexual nature—and that bare breasts alone don’t meet that threshold. Planet Nude covered the ruling at the time.
A concurring opinion by Justice Sarah Hennesy went further, arguing that female breasts aren’t “private parts” under the law at all. “Interpreting ‘private parts’ to include female—and not male—breasts,” she wrote, “would lead to the continued stigmatization of female breasts as inherently sexual.”
The court left the equal protection question unresolved. Blaine's response illustrates why that matters. The ruling narrowed how the state can prosecute topfreedom—but it never established that women have a constitutional right to be topfree. Without that finding, local governments retain room to write their own, stricter definitions of nudity. Blaine isn't defying the Supreme Court; it's legislating into the gap the court declined to close. Until someone challenges a local ordinance on equal protection grounds and forces that question back up the appellate ladder, suburbs like Blaine can keep doing exactly this. 🪐
