The Supreme Court of New Hampshire on Friday upheld the convictions of three women arrested in violation of a local ordinance prohibiting nudity in public places.

The ordinance in question, Laconia City Ordinance § 180-2, states: “It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly or intentionally, in a public place:…appear in a state of nudity.” The ordinance defines nudity in part in a separate section as “the showing of the female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any part of the nipple.”

The initial defendant Pierro was arrested in May 2016 for performing yoga while topless on the beach. Her arrest occurred after refusing the orders of police officers to cover up. Sinclair and Lilley, the other defendants, were then arrested a few days later after sunbathing topless on the same beach in protest of Pierro’s arrest. The women filed joint motions to dismiss arguing that the ordinance was in violation of equal protection given to them under Part 1, Article 2 of the New Hampshire Constitution as well as the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. They additionally argued that their right to Free Speech was being violated and that the ordinance might be preempted by higher state law.

The court reviewed these claims and in a divided 3-2 opinion upheld their convictions. The majority found the ordinance “merely prohibits those who access public places from doing so in the nude, and makes a permissible distinction between the areas of the body that must be covered by each gender.” The majority additionally found no grounds to support the defendants’ free speech claims. The dissent agreed with the majority on free speech, but found the language of the law to be specifically gendered against women and advocated against the ordinance.