Minnesota Supreme Court: Female breasts are not lewd or inherently sexual and can be exposed in public

The lack of sexual conduct means the exposure of her breasts was not lewd, the opinion states, and, since it wasn’t, there is no need to determine if breasts are private parts under the statutory language of indecent exposure.

But Justice Hennesy, in a concurring opinion, wrote that clarifying whether female breasts are private parts “could provide concrete guidance for law enforcement and promote consistent, nondiscriminatory application of the law.”

Her opinion determined that multiple dictionary definitions clearly show that “private parts” refer to genitals, which Hennesy notes are “a person’s reproductive and excretory organs” and breasts do not fall under those categories.

The Court of Appeals decision affirming Plancarte‘s arrest had argued that even with that definition, issues remained. Because state law makes a separate category within the indecent exposure statute for breastfeeding, it would seem that the Legislature wanted to differentiate between a woman exposing her breasts for that reason vs. exposing them in general.

She pointed to a separate legal statute around the dissemination of nonconsensual images which clarifies the difference between “private parts” and “intimate parts.” That statute defines intimate parts as “the genitals, pubic area or anus of an individual, or if the individual is female, a partially or fully exposed nipple.” A statute around sex crimes similarly includes the breast as being an “intimate part.” That differentiation, Hennesy wrote, means the Legislature could have included a woman’s breast as being a private part in indecent exposure laws.