Opinion ID: 112635
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Indiana's public indecency statute provides:

Text: (a) A person who knowingly or intentionally, in a public place: (1) engages in sexual intercourse; (2) engages in deviate sexual conduct; (3) appears in a state of nudity; or (4) fondles the genitals of himself or another person; commits public indecency, a Class A misdemeanor. (b) `Nudity' means the showing of the human male or female genitals, pubic area, or buttocks with less than a fully opaque covering, the showing of the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any part of the nipple, or the showing of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state. Ind. Code § 35-45-4-1 (1988). On its face, this law is not directed at expression in particular. As Judge Easterbrook put it in his dissent below: Indiana does not regulate dancing. It regulates public nudity.. . . Almost the entire domain of Indiana's statute is unrelated to expression, unless we view nude beaches and topless hot dog vendors as speech. Miller v. Civil City of South Bend, 904 F. 2d 1081, 1120 (CA7 1990). The intent to convey a message of eroticism (or any other message) is not a necessary element of the statutory offense of public indecency; nor does one commit that statutory offense by conveying the most explicit message of eroticism, so long as he does not commit any of the four specified acts in the process. [1] Indiana's statute is in the line of a long tradition of laws against public nudity, which have never been thought to run afoul of traditional understanding of the freedom of speech. Public indecencyincluding public nudityhas long been an offense at common law. See 50 Am. Jur. 2d, Lewdness, Indecency, and Obscenity § 17, pp. 449, 472-474 (1970); Annot., Criminal offense predicated on indecent exposure, 93 A. L. R. 996, 997-998 (1934); Winters v. New York, 333 U. S. 507, 515 (1948). Indiana's first public nudity statute, Rev. Laws of Ind., ch. 26, § 60 (1831), predated by many years the appearance of nude barroom dancing. It was general in scope, directed at all public nudity, and not just at public nude expression; and all succeeding statutes, down to the present one, have been the same. Were it the case that Indiana in practice targeted only expressive nudity, while turning a blind eye to nude beaches and unclothed purveyors of hot dogs and machine tools, see Miller, 904 F. 2d, at 1120, 1121, it might be said that what posed as a regulation of conduct in general was in reality a regulation of only communicative conduct. Respondents have adduced no evidence of that. Indiana officials have brought many public indecency prosecutions for activities having no communicative element. See Bond v. State, 515 N. E. 2d 856, 857 (Ind. 1987); In re Levinson, 444 N. E. 2d 1175, 1176 (Ind. 1983); Preston v. State, 259 Ind. 353, 354-355, 287 N. E. 2d 347, 348 (1972); Thomas v. State, 238 Ind. 658, 659-660, 154 N. E. 2d 503, 504-505 (1958); Blanton v. State, 533 N. E. 2d 190, 191 (Ind. App. 1989); Sweeney v. State, 486 N. E. 2d 651, 652 (Ind. App. 1985); Thompson v. State, 482 N. E. 2d 1372, 1373-1374 (Ind. App. 1985); Adims v. State, 461 N. E. 2d 740, 741-742 (Ind. App. 1984); State v. Elliott, 435 N. E. 2d 302, 304 (Ind. App. 1982); Lasko v. State, 409 N. E. 2d 1124, 1126 (Ind. App. 1980). [2] The dissent confidently asserts, post, at 590-591, that the purpose of restricting nudity in public places in general is to protect nonconsenting parties from offense; and argues that since only consenting, admission-paying patrons see respondents dance, that purpose cannot apply and the only remaining purpose must relate to the communicative elements of the performance. Perhaps the dissenters believe that offense to others ought to be the only reason for restricting nudity in public places generally, but there is no basis for thinking that our society has ever shared that Thoreauvian you-may-do-what-you-like-so-long-as-it-does-not-injure-someone-else beau idealmuch less for thinking that it was written into the Constitution. The purpose of Indiana's nudity law would be violated, I think, if 60,000 fully consenting adults crowded into the Hoosier Dome to display their genitals to one another, even if there were not an offended innocent in the crowd. Our society prohibits, and all human societies have prohibited, certain activities not because they harm others but because they are considered, in the traditional phrase, contra bonos mores, i. e., immoral. In American society, such prohibitions have included, for example, sadomasochism, cockfighting, bestiality, suicide, drug use, prostitution, and sodomy. While there may be great diversity of view on whether various of these prohibitions should exist (though I have found few ready to abandon, in principle, all of them), there is no doubt that, absent specific constitutional protection for the conduct involved, the Constitution does not prohibit them simply because they regulate morality. See Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U. S. 186, 196 (1986) (upholding prohibition of private homosexual sodomy enacted solely on the presumed belief of a majority of the electorate in [the jurisdiction] that homosexual sodomy is immoral and unacceptable). See also Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U. S. 49, 68, n. 15 (1973); Dronenburg v. Zech, 239 U. S. App. D. C. 229, 238, and n. 6, 741 F. 2d 1388, 1397, and n. 6 (1984) (opinion of Bork, J.). The purpose of the Indiana statute, as both its text and the manner of its enforcement demonstrate, is to enforce the traditional moral belief that people should not expose their private parts indiscriminately, regardless of whether those who see them are disedified. Since that is so, the dissent has no basis for positing that, where only thoroughly edified adults are present, the purpose must be repression of communication. [3]