Court Upholds SF Nudity Ban

Yesterday a federal court dismissed an attempt to block San Francisco's recently-approved ban on public nudity.  The ban will go into effect as scheduled on Friday. Matthew Bajko has more at Bay Area Reporter:

In his ruling Chen wrote that "the court concludes that the ordinance does not conflict with state law, that plaintiffs' facial challenge to the ordinance based on the First Amendment lacks merit because nudity is not inherently expressive and because the ordinance is not substantially overbroad, and that plaintiffs' equal protection claim as pled fails to state a 14th Amendment claim under the rational basis test." The ruling had been expected, as Chen indicated during a January 17 hearing on the nudists' lawsuit that he saw no reason to block the public nudity ban from being implemented. "The plaintiffs took an unlikely position in their case that if they couldn't be naked everywhere, no one could be naked anywhere. We believed their legal challenge to be baseless, and we're grateful that the court agreed," stated City Attorney Dennis Herrera in a news release.

Nudism activists say they will appeal the ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court.