Comment on Is it legal to be out in public in just underwear?
krayj@lemmy.world 10 months agoThis doesn’t invalidate my earlier statement that citizens are still subject to city ordinances.
There are around 20,000 cities and municipalities in the United States, most of them have public-nudity/indecent-exposure laws.
You successfully made the point that the legality of city ordinances can be challenged in higher courts (and even sometimes overturned) but the reality is that most people have neither the funding nor the time nor the expertise to take that up…which means ultimately you’re still subject to a city/municipality ordinances as well as state and federal.
In 2017, Tagami v City of Chicago, the US Court of appeals for 7th Circuit ruled 2-1 that the city’s public nudity ordinance did not violate the complainant’s rights and upheld the lower court decisions (which meant that City of Chicago’s ordinance remained intact and validated as enforceable by the city).
At the end of the day, yes you do have to be cognizant of the ordinances/codes of the city in question and cannot rely on State/Federal law alone.
ultranaut@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I think you may have misunderstood me, I was just making the point that there’s nothing special about Seattle public nudity laws and that the same rules technically apply throughout the entire state of Washington. I’m not trying to invalidate any statements or make any points about what laws people have to follow or how the US legal system works or anything like that. Someone said Seattle had special rules about public nudity, I was just clarifying that those same rules apply throughout the state and nothing else.