Police officers in Rochester were called to the Kwik Trip parking lot because Eloisa Plancarte had her shirt pulled up, revealing her breasts in July 2021.
Plancarte was known to officers; they had already charged her twice that week with indecent exposure, once for exposing her underwear, once for exposing her breasts and underwear.
When the cops approached her, they asked why her breasts were out. She told them she was a stripper at a biker bar and that “all the Catholic girls do it.”
She was placed under arrest and charged with misdemeanor indecent exposure for willfully and lewdly exposing her private parts. Plancarte challenged the charge, arguing her breasts are not private parts and, even if they are, there was nothing lewd about exposing them.
Last week, in a unanimous opinion, the Minnesota Supreme Court agreed with her.
In overturning district court and Court of Appeals decisions, the state’s high court ruled there is nothing illegal about a woman having her breasts out in public in Minnesota, as long as she is not engaging in sexual activity.
A 20-page opinion written by Justice Karl Procaccini and an 11-page concurring opinion by Justice Sarah Hennesy presented a dissertation on the wording of Minnesota legal statutes and the hypocrisy of state laws against women’s bodies.
Indecent exposure is an obscenity in Minnesota and laws preventing it keep citizens from willfully exposing their body “lewdly” or showing their private parts or the private parts of another person. It also prohibits anyone from engaging in sexual behavior in public. Breastfeeding was already exempt from the law.
Someone should ask Minnesota politicians if they agree with the ruling.
