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No Nude Dancing in Harvard Square

Massachusetts' highest court has stripped a Cambridge woman of her ability to express herself by dancing naked in Harvard Square. Yesterday, the Supreme Judicial Court reinstated felony charges of open and gross lewdness against Ria Ora, who was arrested in June 2005 when she danced nude in Harvard Square as part of an "anti-Christmas" protest. In Commonwealth v. Ora, the SJC reversed the trial court judge, who found that the criminal statute's "blanket prohibition against public nudity" (pun intended?) was a violation of the First Amendment.

In previous rulings, the SJC noted, it had said the statute would not apply where the "lewdness or nudity took place before a willing audience." It had not, however, decided the question Ora's case presented: Whether the statute could constitutionally restrict nudity imposed "on an unsuspecting or unwilling person." Concluding that the statute is a "legitimate content neutral restriction on expressive activity," the SJC reasoned that "it furthers the important State interest in preventing fright or intimidation from intentional lewd and lascivious conduct imposed on unsuspecting or unwilling persons, particularly children."

In the Boston Herald today, reporter Laurel J. Sweet writes that she asked Ora's attorney Daniel Beck, "what point Ora was trying to make about crass commercialization by taking off her clothes." Beck's reply: "I don't know, quite frankly." Meanwhile, the blog Universal Hub recommends watching the oral arguments before the SJC, "if only to hear the highest court in the state discussing Lady Godiva."

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 11, 2008 at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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