You know: Minnesota.

Leaping down a particularly slippery slope, the The Minnesota Supreme Court last week overturned the conviction of Eloisa R. Plancarte for indecent exposure after she bared her breasts in a parking lot in 2021. Olmsted County prosecutors charged her with a misdemeanor after police responded to a complaint about a woman walking around topless. Judge Joseph Chase found Plancarte, 28, guilty of indecent exposure and the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld Plancarte’s conviction in 2024. Now the woke Supreme Court in the Land of Lakes has reversed the conviction.

Writing for the majority, Justice Karl Procaccini wrote that Plancarte had not engaged “in any type of overt public sexual activity….the State has not met its burden of proving that Plancarte’s exposure was lewd, because none of the evidence in the record suggests that her conduct was of a sexual nature.” In her concurring opinion, Justice Sarah Hennesy wrote that criminalizing the exposure of female, but not male breasts “fails to recognize the more nuanced physical realities of human bodies.”

Whatever that means…

“Would a transgender man be prohibited from exposing his chest?” Hennesy continued. “What about a transgender woman who has had top surgery? Where do the chests of intersex and nonbinary persons fit within this dichotomy? And how do we treat the exposed chest of a breast cancer survivor who has had a mastectomy? Interpreting this statutory scheme as differentiating between male and female breasts is not sufficiently clear and definite to warn Minnesotans of what conduct is punishable.”

Great. Clearly, in Minnesota the conduct of a man walking around with his naughty bits hanging out would also be deemed non-sexual. There is nothing improper about reasonable laws upholding and enforcing societal standards of decency, decorum, respect, civility and modesty. Would the result have been different if a male motorist had been distracted by the bare-breasted pedestrian and run down a child in a crosswalk? That this didn’t occur is only moral luck.

Using the Ethics Incompleteness Principle examples of transgender conduct to eviscerate the law involved is intellectually dishonest: those cases would be difficult, but would also be recognized as narrowly applicable. If Sydney Sweeney’s conduct in walking bare-breasted in a parking lot would be legitimately seen as sexual—and it would—then a law prohibiting such conduct by women generally is reasonable. The pursuit of happiness is not without borders in a civilized society that wants to stay that way.

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Pointer: Jutgory