A Colorado judge has blocked a college town’s law against women going topless, saying the law is likely unconstitutional.
US District Judge R. Brooke Jackson on Tuesday said that Fort Collins’ ordinance is based on gender discrimination and issued an injunction against its enforcement.
Fort Collins’ indecency code makes it a crime for a female over the age of 10 to display her breast “below the top of the nipple,” but not men, with violators risking a US$250 fine.
The law “perpetuates a stereotype engrained in our society that female breasts are primarily objects of sexual desire, whereas male breasts are not,” Jackson wrote.
The judge accused city council members of falling prey to discriminatory thinking when they voted unanimously in 2015 to keep a law that prohibits the display of female breasts.
“The naked female breast is seen as disorderly or dangerous because society, from Renaissance paintings to Victoria’s Secret commercials, has conflated female breasts with genitalia and stereotyped them as such,” Jackson wrote. “The irony is that by forcing women to cover up their bodies, society has made naked women’s breasts something to see.”
The hometown of Colorado State University had no cases on record of women being charged with the crime of going topless, and it did make an exception for nursing mothers, but two women sued over the ban.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer, David Lane, said that he was not surprised the judge blocked the law.
“My clients take a position that any statute with the words ‘Women are prohibited from’ is unconstitutional, and I agree with them. Apparently so does a federal judge,” Lane said in a statement.
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