May 12, 2025
Child Protection League Statement regarding the Minnesota Supreme Court ruling to reverse the conviction of a woman for indecent exposure for exposing her breasts in public:
Two members of the seven-member Minnesota Supreme Court spent 31 pages challenging the meaning of the word “lewd” and denying that women’s breasts are sexual while completely ignoring the most relevant part of the indecent exposure law, namely:
A person who commits any of the following acts in any public place, or in any place where others are present, is guilty of a misdemeanor:…
(1) willfully and lewdly exposes the person’s body, or the private parts thereof;
(2) procures another to expose private parts; or
(3) engages in any open or gross lewdness or lascivious behavior, or any public indecency other than behavior specified in this subdivision. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/617.23 [Emphasis added.]
Any woman who bares her breasts in public places is indecent by any reasonable interpretation of the word. It clearly violates the indecency law and normal community standards. In this case the woman was a stripper who was arrested for doing in public what she does in a private venue for paying adults where no minors are present.
Activist judges like these appointed by Governor Walz are accomplices in Walz’s war on our children. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the ACLU of Minnesota, and the radical gender activists Gender Justice are appellants in the case. They are the same people legalizing gender mutilation on our children, releasing hardened criminals from prison, and making Minnesota a sanctuary state for illegal immigrants.
By ignoring the relevant part of state law, two judges have outrageously legalized exhibitionism. As this relates to children, allowing women to bare breasts on the beaches, on the streets, and at grocery stores erodes children’s natural sense of modesty that serves as a safe sexual boundary. This ruling is an overt attack on their innocence and their minds, making them far more vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
Julie Quist
Child Protection League Research Director