As last summer was winding down, the Naturist Action Committee scored a legal victory in their fight to retain the right for nude sunbathers to go au natural on San Onofre State Beach's traditionally clothing-optional Trail 6 strand.
As this summer heats up, the committee and local nudists are reeling from a legal defeat that could force them to cover up on the same 1,000-foot stretch of sand.
Cindy Carcamo reports over at the Orange County Register site that the 4th District Court of Appeal upheld a new policy implemented by Arnold Schwarzenegger's state Department of Parks and Recreation to outlaw the decades-long practice of going in the buff on the secluded beach that abuts Camp Pendleton land.
Allen Baylis, the Huntington Beach nudist, onetime city council candidate and attorney who previously laid out the Naturist Action Committee case for the Weekly, tells Carcamo he will appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Sheila Fell ruled in August 2008 that the parks department's nudity ban, which was to be enforced beginning that Labor Day weekend, violated a policy to look the other way–unless their was a formal complaint by a member of the public–that had extended back to Jerry Brown's reign as governor in the mid-1970s.
But appellate justices bought the argument of the department's current regime, which had complained that policy was enacted with little debate.
It remains unclear when park rangers will start citing nekkid beachgoers.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.