Women Take Their Fight to Go Topless on Maryland Beaches to Supreme Court

A group of women fighting against a topless sunbathing ban in their Maryland beach town is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to rule against the restriction. Ocean City's ordinance, passed in 2017, bars women from sunbathing topless but doesn't uphold the same restriction for men.

The ordinance was passed after Chelsea Eline, one of the plaintiffs, contacted local police and asserted that she had a right to go topless, the Daily Times reported. She and four other women then sued the town in 2018, alleging that the ordinance violated their constitutional rights.

The petition to SCOTUS now asks the high court to mull whether safeguarding "moral sensibilities," a cause cited in the defense of the ordinance, is a governmental interest that places like Ocean City can use to back a ban that applies only to women, and to all women, the Times reported.

The plaintiffs allege that the restriction breaches the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause "because the discriminatory gender classification contained in the ordinance does not further an important governmental interest, and is not narrowly tailored to achieve its objective."

A three-judge panel from Richmond's 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that the ordinance is constitutional and does not violate the plaintiff's rights. It cited other decisions from courts across the country that have upheld similar restrictions.

"The judicial legacy of justifying laws on the basis of the perceived moral sensibilities of the public is far from spotless. Some government action that we now rightly view as unconstitutional, if not immoral, has been justified on that basis," Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. wrote in the decision. "Even so, in this situation, protecting public sensibilities serves an important basis for government action."

On September 2, the court refused a request to hear the case again.

Chief Judge Roger Gregory concurred with Quattlebaum, noting that U.S. Supreme Court precedent requires upholding the ban. But he suggested the court should reconsider the issue.

"At first glance, Ocean City's ordinance seems innocuous enough. ... But we must take care not to let our analysis be confined by the limits of our social lens," Gregory wrote. "Suppose the ordinance defined nudity to include public exposure of a woman's hair, neck, shoulders, or ankles. Would that law not run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause?"

This petition was filed December 1, and the court has until January 7 to respond, according to the U.S. Supreme Court docket.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.