The city of Sand Springs approves a gender neutral public decency ordinance.
The new rule bans obscene nudity by a woman or a man if it causes an alarm or disturbance, because city officials didn’t want to discriminate based on a person’s sex.
Chief of Police Mike Carter says his officers aren’t going to be patrolling Sand Springs looking for topless people and issuing citations.
“We’re going to require on these cases that it be an individual out in the public who acts as the complainant on that, and that way they can come to court and explain how their peace was disturbed, and the judge would make a ruling on that.”
Chief Carter says the new ordinance doesn’t include children ten and under, mothers who are breastfeeding or medical emergencies.
Sand Springs was forced to look at its public nudity ordinance after a ruling from the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals on a Fort Collins, Colorado ban on women being topless.
The court with jurisdiction over states including Oklahoma ruled the Fort Collins ordinance violated women’s equal protection rights.
