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Originally Posted by DRDavenport
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thanks for that - I looked it over.
About half of the states are listed. What you will find related to my earlier post is that most of those listed have the "broader" (more liberal) indecent exposure law, meaning the nudity must be accompanied by some offensive, lewd behavior ("intent to arouse" is a commonly used term, as is "likely to cause affront and alarm").
Massachusetts only lists as relevant "common law". I'll have to look that one up to see what is going on there!
Tennessee would appear to have the stricter version of "indecent exposure" where there need not be intent to arouse or offend to prosecute. in other words, its more of a "prude" state
(despite Bonnaroo)
Where the broader indecent exposure law is found, the law might be referred to as a "Lewdness" law or "public lewdness" law. NEw Hampshire's is called "indecent exposure and lewdness", kind of odd - that implies that the indecent exposure refers to the simple nudity only. But since you still have to have both present to prosecute, they are not banning simple nudity per se.
Now New York has two laws, a "public lewdness" law, and an "Exposure of person" law. The "exposure of person" law is strict, i.e conservative. Having that indicates to me that New York is in a relative minority of states which ban simple nudity in public. But I could be wrong about that. in any case, this makes New York sort of the reverse of Oregon, at least in the case of New York City. If toplessness is allowed in the city, then the city is more liberal than the state, not the other way around as in Oregon. But I'm still learning about all this, so I'm just thinking out loud.
ORegon is not listed..
Other western states generally do not ban simple nudity. The language here, as in some other states though vary somewhat. Other terms occasionally used in the law include "Reckless", "negligent", and "disorderly" and I don't know quite how these stack up against the more commonly used terms. "Disorderly" crops up a few times and has really broad connotations - seems it could apply to lots of types of behavior while nude like drunkedness, yelling, etc - stuff that goes on in Boulder during naked runs, etc. So I guess you can't run naked and yell after having had a few beers, but maybe you can still be lewd?
That would be the case if the law substituted words like "intent to arouse" with "disorderly" perhaps. So its all in the wording...but actually, NO states allow lewdness, I mean, if lewdess (intent to arouse, affront, offend, self gratify etc) is not specifically referred to in the indecent exposure law (like Tennessee), it must be covered elsewhere.
BTW - Tennessee's law states only that it is illegal to "knowingly appears in a public place in a state of nudity". This law is not given a name, but it sounds like the stricter public nudity ordinances that towns sometimes enact (and to which I referred to earlier - Ashland, Or, etc) where the intent is to have broader power to control public nudity in your local area.
KLondike