3rd Circuit: Arrest of thong-clad protesters for lewdity upheld
Shannon P. Duffy reports on the Legal Intelligencer:
A group of young men who stripped down to thong underwear and formed a roadside pyramid to stage a protest when President George W. Bush was visiting Lancaster County in July 2004 have lost their bid to revive a civil rights suit against the Pennsylvania state troopers who arrested them.
The protesters claimed in the suit that they were attempting to recreate one of the infamous photographs of abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that their simulation of nudity was therefore essential to their message.
But U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond dismissed the suit in March 2006, finding that the troopers had probable cause to arrest the protesters for “open lewdness” because they “appeared to be entirely naked” and there were young children in the vicinity.
Egolf v. Witmer, No. 06-2193 (3rd Cir. May 22, 2008)