Massachusetts Judge: Secretly Photographing Up a Woman’s Skirt Okay
by Betty Butter • 5 March, 2014 • Crime • 2 Comments
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Now here is something for feminists to get riled up about. A Massachusetts judged has rule that there is no law against secretly photographing up a woman’s skirt.
From The Boston Globe:
Shooting photos up a woman’s skirt is legal in Mass., SJC rules
By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff, March 05, 2014
The state’s highest court says “upskirting,” the practice of secretly photographing under a woman’s skirt, is not prohibited by state law.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said today that a state law intended to prohibit “Peeping Tom” voyeurism of completely or partially undressed people did not apply to people who take pictures of people who are fully clothed.
The ruling came in the case of a man who allegedly took photos under the dresses of women on Green Line trolleys.
The court focused on the language of the law, which prohibits secret photography of “a person … who is partially nude.”
“A female passenger on a MBTA trolley who is wearing a skirt, dress, or the like covering [private] parts of her body is not a person who is ‘partially nude,’ no matter what is or is not underneath the skirt by way of underwear or other clothing,” the court said in a unanimous ruling written by Justice Margot Botsford.
The court said Suffolk County prosecutors, who argued that the Peeping Tom law should apply, had a “flawed” interpretation of the law.
The high court ruling reversed a Boston Municipal Court judge’s denial of a motion to dismiss by Michael Robertson.
Trolley riders alerted MBTA Transit Police in August 2010 that a man appeared to be taking photographs of women, including one instance in which he appeared to be attempting to photograph a woman’s crotch area, the court said.
Transit Police set up a decoy operation the next day involving a female undercover officer wearing a skirt. Robertson allegedly took pictures of her, focusing on her crotch area, and he was arrested, the court said.
Robertson was charged in December 2011. In 2012, he filed a motion to dismiss the complaints. It was denied. But he took his appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court, which agreed with him.
The court said the core of prosecutors’ argument was “the proposition that a woman, and in particular a woman riding on a public trolley, has a reasonable expectation of privacy in not having a stranger secretly take photographs up her skirt. The proposition is eminently reasonable, but [the law] in its current form does not address it.”
Read more here
Now, this is what I call equality. After all, would it be illegal to shoot a photo up the skirt of a Scottish man in a kilt? I think not.
Here is my suggestion for feminists, like gubernatorial candidate, Wendy Davis, who believes their is a war on women: Put on a gas mask, don’t you know there is a war on women?
Read more at
http://blurbrain.com/massachusetts-judge-secretly-photographing-womans-skirt-okay/#mtHo6BE7yWM6ZQjs.99