Free the nipple! Minnesota Dem says women should be able to go topless after resident is jailed for indecent exposure

Democrats in Minnesota are chafing at the 'antiquated' law that prevents women going topless in public after one was jailed for 90 days for exposing herself at a gas station.

Eloisa Plancarte, 27, told police 'Catholic girls do it all the time' as they questioned her at the Kwik Trip in Rochester in July 2021.

She appealed against her conviction claiming a man would not have been arrested that the prosecution violated her constitutional right to equal protection under the law.

Plancarte lost the appeal last month on a narrow 2-1 decision and Minnesota House Rep Samantha Sencer-Mura has now pledged to change the law.

'This to me seems really wrong,' she told The Star Tribune, 'Particularly now, as we as a society are thinking differently about gender and gender identity, I think this law feels very antiquated.'

Minnesota Democratic House Rep Samantha Sencer-Mura says women should be as free as men to expose their chests in public without fear of prosecution

The Representative was moved by the case of Eloisa Plancarte after she was jailed for 90 days for indecent exposure at a Rochester gas station 

Protests against 'discriminatory' indecency laws have been gathering strength for years, including this demonstration in Minnesota in 2015 

Minnesota law defines indecent exposure as an incident where someone 'willfully and lewdly exposes the person's body, or the private parts thereof'.

But there have been periodic protests both in the US and abroad at women's chests being deemed private when men's are not.

Dissenting judge Diane B Bratvold said that the decision 'raises more questions about criminal conduct than it clarifies', and that the growing prominence of transsexuals men and women is likely to throw another spanner in works.

'Every year, viewers of the Academy Awards and New York Fashion Week observe a variety of fashions that expose breasts to varying degrees,' she wrote.

'How does the majority's rule apply to a person whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth?

'Or to a person whose breasts have been surgically altered, which happens for a wide variety of reasons?

'Is a transgender woman who has not physically transitioned her breasts engaged in criminal conduct when going topless?'

In 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that a prosecution of three women who were for removing their bathing suit tops on a New Hampshire beach did not violate their constitutional rights.

Brazilian model was arrested and threatened with a year in jail for removing her shirt and tying it around her waist while walking her dogs next to a beach in Balneario Camboriu last year

'What should be normal for both genders ends up being denied to one of them in an arbitrary and repressive manner,' she said 

Kia Sinclair (left) and Ginger Pierro (right) were arrested in 2016 after removing their tops at a beach in New Hampshire and refusing to put them on when beachgoers complained.

Heidi Lilley, Kia Sinclair and Ginger Pierro were arrested in 2016 after removing their tops at a beach in Laconia and refusing to put them on when beachgoers complained. Pierro was doing yoga, while the two others were sunbathing.

Brazilian model Caroline Werner, 37, lashed out at the country's 'patriarchal, violent culture' when she was threatened with a year in jail after going topless while taking her dog for a walk near a beach in the southern city of Balneário Camboriú last year.

'Unfortunately, in my country even though the Constitution ensures equality, in practice this does not happen,' she said.

'What should be normal for both genders ends up being denied to one of them in an arbitrary and repressive manner.'

Presiding judge Kevin G Ross cited case law dating back nearly 40 years as he upheld Plancarte's conviction.

'Because a woman's fully exposed breasts are 'private parts' under the statute and intentionally exposing them in the parking lot of a convenience store constitutes willful and lewd exposure, we reject her insufficient-evidence argument,' he wrote.

'And because a woman fully exposing her breasts is not similarly situated with a man exposing his chest, we reject her equal protection argument.'

But Sencer-Mura warned that the issue will not disappear and that the existing law can no longer cope with gender ambiguity.

'If law enforcement believes that someone identifies as a female, then they're going to treat them differently if they have their shirt off than they would someone that they perceive to be a male, she said.

'As we have a shifting understanding of gender, that law just doesn't make sense anymore.'