Saggy pants ban: Riviera Beach's ban on saggy pants ruled unconstitutional -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com: "RIVIERA BEACH - Drop that ordinance -- and your pants if you consider it fashionable, Palm Beach County Judge Laura Johnson ruled Wednesday.
The judge overturned Riviera Beach's saggy pants ordinance, which had prohibited anyone from wearing pants below the waist exposing skin or underwear.
A referendum endorsing the ban was supported by 72 percent of city voters in March 2008. Riviera Beach began enforcing the ordinance in July but it was ruled unconstitutional by Johnson, city spokeswoman Rose Anne Brown said."
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What an amazing thing a constitution is. To think that all these years the right to wear saggy pants has been there, and suddenly it has been discovered.
1 comment:
Perhaps one of the more important points is that "majority rule" is NOT the only consideration when it comes to restricting freedom of individuals. This applies to HOAs too and that is just one of the problems of continuing to suggest that the ONLY consideration is the vote of a majority of those who voted without examining the substance of a restrictive covenant.
This case wasn't so much about the right of the individual to wear saggy pants as it was about what the city is not permitted to do. Thank goodness that a judge is putting some limitation on the city's attempts to impose criminal sanctions for what many would see as a racially motivated dress code.
The "ordinance" is absurd. So what if you can see underwear? This is Florida, in a city named "Riviera Beach", that is located on Florida's coastline. You can wear bikinis and swimsuits below the waistline without any underwear at all. The underwear that might be exposed from "saggy pants" covers more than what most swimsuits cover. This was an ordinance that deserved to be deep-sixed with extreme prejudice - the same kind of prejudice that motivated the ordinance in the first place.
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