Judge Rejects Topless Preliminary Injunction

OCEAN CITY — Convinced Ocean City officials have a better understanding of the public sensibilities than the plaintiffs in the case, a federal judge on Thursday ruled against a preliminary injunction that would have allowed women to go topless where men can in the resort

Last January, a civil suit filed in U.S. District Court challenged an emergency ordinance passed by the Mayor and Council in June 2017 prohibiting females from going topless in the same areas as men. The plaintiffs, including local resident Chelsea Eline and four others, filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that would allow them to go topless while the case was decided.

A hearing on the preliminary injunction was heard in federal court on Dec. 7, during which Mayor Rick Meehan, Council Secretary Mary Knight and Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Melanie Pursel testified on behalf of the town. The plaintiff’s lone witness was noted University of Indiana professor Dr. Debra Herbenick, who testified about the changing public sensibilities on female bare-chestedness.

U.S. District Court Judge James Bredar essentially ruled the town’s own representatives, including Meehan, Knight and Pursel, were better judges of the public sensibilities in the resort.

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from Salisbury News http://bit.ly/2UZxqR8