‘Free the Nipple’ Scores Win as Ft. Collins Gives Up Topless Ban

After a three-year court battle that ended up costing the city $322,000, Ft. Collins, Colorado, agreed last week to drop the ban on women going topless in public. The city had continued to fight the lawsuit brought in May of 2016 by two women, Brit Hoagland and Samantha Six—under the banner Free the Nipple Colorado—who asserted that the city’s ban on women exposing their breasts was discriminatory, because no such ban existed to force men to keep their shirts on. The city was not legally able to enforce the ban anyway, since February when the 10th Circuit United States appeals court issued a ruling agreeing with the two women’s argument that women were banned from going topless only because of social attitudes that define women’s breasts, but not the male equivalent, as sexual, according to a report by The Coloradoan newspaper.  “We’re left, as the district court was, to suspect that the City’s professed interest in protecting children derives not from any morphological differences between men’s and women’s breasts but from negative stereotypes depicting women’s breasts, but not men’s breasts, as sex objects,” federal Judge Gregory Phillips wrote in the court’s majority opinion. The law prohibited any woman or girl “who is ten (10) years of age or older” from appearing in public “with her breast exposed below the top of the areola and nipple.” The law also prohibited women from baring their breasts even on private property, if they might be seen by anyone on public property who does not take “extraordinary steps” to get a peek. The city would have been forced to spend another $250,000 to appeal the federal court’s February ruling, according a Westword newspaper report, and in the end, Ft. Collins simply dropped the bare-breast ban language from the its public nudity code. But the nipple may not be entirely free yet. A similar case in New Hampshire, brought by three women who were arrested after performing yoga exercises on a public beach while topless, is now under appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to NBC News. If SCOTUS hears the case, which will be determined sometime later this year, a ruling against the women could allow Ft. Collins to put its topless ban back on the books.  Photo By C.Suthorn / Wikimedia Commons