Will the Supreme Court take up the issue? Might they be amused enough that people will spend gobs of money on this? I have my doubts, because it really seems more of something that is a 10th Amendment issue, not a federal constitution issue
Could Ocean City’s topless ordinance head to the Supreme Court? The latest legal battle
The constitutionality of Ocean City’s law banning women — and not men — from sunbathing topless could potentially go before the U.S. Supreme Court after the attorneys representing five women in the case petitioned the nation’s highest court earlier this month.
The petitioners are asking the Supreme Court to review the Aug. 4 federal appeals court ruling, which determined that Ocean City’s law is constitutional.
This petition was filed Dec. 1, and the court has until Jan. 7 to respond, according to the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
While the Supreme Court hears only a small percentage of cases petitioned, this move continues a new chapter in the ongoing debate over what is protecting “moral sensibility” or violating gender equality in Maryland’s largest beach town.
In 2017, Ocean City passed a law banning only women from exposing their breasts in public. It came after one of the plaintiffs in the case, Chelsea Eline, contacted Ocean City police and said it was her right to go topless.
Eline and four other women then filed a lawsuit against the town in 2018, claiming that the ordinance violated their constitutional rights.
A federal judge first ruled in April 2020 that the town’s ordinance was legal and did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, as the plaintiffs argued.
It doesn’t seem to violate, more importantly, the Maryland Constitution, because the federal Constitution really doesn’t say much of anything about not being able to pass any laws that keep people from walking around on the beech with the boobs hanging out. What’s next, showing full nudity? Walking around the streets with boobs hanging out? There’s always been morality laws and rules in society, some which are wrong, some which are just simple propriety.
After losing in federal court, which, really, should have never heard the case, referring it back to state court, they lost at the federal court of appeals
In this decision, Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. wrote that Ocean City’s elected leaders are within their rights to enact laws that protect public sensibilities.
“The judicial legacy of justifying laws on the basis of the perceived moral sensibilities of the public is far from spotless. Some government action that we now rightly view as unconstitutional, if not immoral, has been justified on that basis,” Quattlebaum wrote. “Even so, in this situation, protecting public sensibilities serves an important basis for government action.”
Some people just have this sense of Moral Outrage that they aren’t allowed to do everything they want in public, and want to force everyone to comply with their demands. And, no, restricting women to keeping their boobs covered at the beach is not the same as making them wear a full body covering nor telling blacks they can’t ride at the front of the bus. But, they’re still petitioning the Supreme Court
This latest move asks the court to declare that Ocean City’s ordinance violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution “because the discriminatory gender classification contained in the ordinance does not further an important governmental interest, and is not narrowly tailored to achieve its objective.”
It’s a pretty big stretch. But, amusing.
