from www.sfgate.com – The California Supreme Court poured cold water on skinny-dippers Thursday, allowing state parks officers to enforce a ban on nudity at state beaches, including those that have been informally designated as “clothing optional.”
The court unanimously denied review of a lower-court ruling upholding a May 2008 decision by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s parks director, Ruth Coleman, to allow officers to cite nude sunbathers on a portion of San Onofre State Beach in Orange County where they had previously been undisturbed.
Coleman’s action revoked a policy announced in 1979 by then-Parks Director Russell Cahill, who said officers would wait until someone complained before enforcing regulations that forbid public nudity at state parks and beaches.
Under that policy, officers who got a complaint would tell the nudist to put on a swimsuit or leave for the day. Otherwise, they took no action as unclad sunbathers and swimmers congregated in isolated sections of state beaches from San Diego to north of Eureka.
Despite the new ruling, park rangers won’t be conducting sweeps of beaches up and down the coast looking for lawbreaking nudists, Roy Stearns, spokesman for the Parks and Recreation Department, said Thursday.
“An officer still has the discretion to take action or not take action,” he said. “He can warn them, have them put their clothes on, and if there’s no compliance, he can cite them.
“These are public beaches,” Stearns said. “It seems to me there ought to be a greater code of conduct for all of us to get along with some standards of etiquette.”
Allen Baylis, an attorney and officer of the Naturist Action Committee, which sued unsuccessfully to preserve the informal clothing-optional zone at San Onofre, said the parks department has apparently decided that “it’s better to prosecute naturists than to accommodate them.”
“They’re out of step with the needs of the public,” he said, noting that several other states and the federal government allow nudity in areas of their public beaches.
Baylis said the parks department has the authority to designate clothing-optional beaches. Stearns said the agency has no intention of doing so.
The state court ruling doesn’t apply to federal parkland such as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes San Francisco’s North Baker Beach and several other Bay Area sites frequented by the unclothed. It also does not apply to private land where nudists congregate, such as a portion of Muir Beach in Marin County.
But park rangers could enforce the ban at traditionally clothing-optional state beaches such as Gray Whale Cove south of Pacifica and Red Rock Beach in Mount Tamalpais State Park.
The case is Naturist Action Committee vs. Department of Parks and Recreation, S174821.