The Boston man arrested in 2010 for using a cell phone camera to take pictures and video up women’s skirts on the subway did not violate Massachusett’s Peeping Tom Law, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
The court found that, though a woman has a “reasonable expectation of privacy in not having a stranger take photographs up her skirt” the current law does not apply because, technically speaking, a woman in a skirt is fully clothed.
The law “does not apply to photographing…persons who are fully clothed and, in particular, does not reach the type of upskirting that the defendant is charged with attempting to accomplish on the MBTA,” the ruling said.
The district attorney’s office called on the Massachusetts legislature to move fast in updating the Peeping Tom Law to protect women in skirts.
[Reuters]
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Introducing the 2024 TIME100 Next
- The Reinvention of J.D. Vance
- How to Survive Election Season Without Losing Your Mind
- Welcome to the Golden Age of Scams
- Did the Pandemic Break Our Brains?
- The Many Lives of Jack Antonoff
- 33 True Crime Documentaries That Shaped the Genre
- Why Gut Health Issues Are More Common in Women
Contact us at letters@time.com