Will Walters: ‘I just want my life back.’

In a remarkable legal whipsaw for the City of San Diego, a three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has denied a motion for an en banc review from the entire court to appeal their decision allowing Will Walters to have his day in court, said a spokesperson for the plaintiff, Will Walters. The appeal was filed after the panel remanded the case back to U.S. district court where presiding judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo ruled in March of 2014 that, “There is anecdotal evidence before the court that individuals wearing less than what Walters wore at the 2011 Pride event may not have been cited for public nudity at different times and in different settings,” she wrote. “The court concludes that this anecdotal evidence is irrelevant, confusing, lacking in foundation, and therefore, inadmissible.” She contended that “unequal treatment that results from laxity of enforcement does not deny equal protection and is not constitutionally prohibited discriminatory enforcement.”

The Hon. Jacqueline H. Nguyen, Hon. Richard Paez and Hon. Harry Pregerson of the appeals court concurred, however, that “The district court erred in granting summary judgment for the City of San Diego and Lieutenant Nieslit on Walters’ Equal Protection Clause claims. Viewing all ‘the evidence in the light most favorable to’ Walters, Olsen v. Idaho State Bd. of Med., 363 F.3d 916, 922 (9th Cir. 2004), there are material triable issues of fact as to whether the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) adopted a discriminatory policy of selectively enforcing the City’s nudity ordinance at San Diego Gay Pride (the Pride event) in 2011.”

The legal wrangling between Walters and the City of San Diego is now in its fifth year. Walters, who has come to be known simply as ‘Kilt Boy,’ was arrested July 16, 2011 at San Diego Pride allegedly because he violated a new nudity policy hammered out between the Pride committee and a lieutenant from the San Diego Police Department, Lt. Scott Nieslit (now captain of the SDPD). According to the district court’s opinion, based on Walters’ complaint and the allegations accompanying the city’s motion for summary judgment, “police officers met with the San Diego Pride organization about two months in advance of the event, at which time a Pride staffer told the officer in charge that “they were having issues with public nudity and they were asking the police department to help get compliance.” Pride organizers were concerned that excessive nudity would endanger the “family” nature of the event. The police evidently resolved to be stricter than they had been in the past in enforcing the city’s public nudity ordinance at the Pride event. The ordinance states that nobody over the age of ten “shall be nude and exposed to public view in or on any public right of way, public park, public beach or waters adjacent thereto, or other public land.” The term “nude” is defined in the ordinance: “It shall mean devoid of an opaque covering which covers the genitals, pubic hair, buttocks, perineum, anus or anal region of any person, or any portion of the breast at or below the areola thereof of any female person.”

But according to Walter’s lawyer, Christopher Morris, what started out as an across-the-board revision of some loosely defined nod to public morality, quickly devolved into scapegoating after Walters was singled out for his costume, a mesh kilt over a G-string. “The absence of enforcement at other venues doesn’t show an animus in and of itself. Which is true, as the Supreme Court has said…But when you put that lack of enforcement anywhere else in the overall context of everything else Will has been talking about, a police officer referring to Will as a “drama queen,” enforced only at Pride, no other citations for anything…lifeguards have a totally different policy – any beachgoer can wear a G-string without any problems – and when you put that in the context of gay Pride, it’s enough.”

Which puts City Attorney Jan Goldsmith in the unenviable position of having to decide how far to push the city’s position. If he decides, out of spite or short-sightedness, to enforce a blanket ban on nudity, does that mean the city will have to man morality police on Segways at the beaches and other public events to ensure its citizens are complying with a no-nudity policy in the strictest definition of the word?

While that has become the central narrative to this case, however, a more troubling, and equally insidious thread appears to have all but vanished in the public telling, especially in the way the press and media are recounting it. This official story, while certainly about the indiscriminate enforcement of a questionable policy – after all, what are we saying to our children when we tell them the human body is something that needs to be covered up – has all but minimized the way Will was treated by the San Diego Police Department. Take, for example, Fox News’ Jamie Chambers who reported on television that “because he refused to sign [the police officer’s] ticket he was arrested.”

But as Walters will tell you, as he has had to do umpteen times before, he refused to sign the ticket because the officer would not allow Will to see what was on the summons. “Initially what happened was after Officers Mondesir and Nieslit came up to me, he said to me: ‘I need to talk to you.’ I said, ‘OK, that’s fine. What do you need to talk to me about? And I need your name, your badge number and I need to call my attorney and tell him what happened and then I can talk to you.’ He refused to give me his name, didn’t want to give me his name. At one point I said, ‘I don’t even know if you’re with the San Diego Police Department because you’re refusing to tell me who you’re with.’ That’s when Office Debbie Becker decided to grab me by the back of the neck and basically manhandled me down to the ground. But I must have brushed her arm or something because then she said, ‘If you touch me again, I’ll shoot you.’ (Battery and assault charges were subsequently dropped.) So we get outside the beer garden, we get outside the event and this is when Officer Mondesir says. ‘OK, we’re with the San Diego Police Department and you are under arrest.’ I said, OK, what am I under arrest for?’ ‘You are under arrest for being naked.’

At this point, Walters pressed the officers to tell him what he needed to cover up in order to be compliant. A back-and-forth ensued. “I was begging him to tell me what needed to be covered up.” None of the police apparently could identify what, specifically, Walters needed to do so they suggested he go home and change. Within minutes, Will was handcuffed, placed in the back of a patrol car and spent the next 24 hours in jail.

A lackadaisical media. An overzealous police department. An indifferent city attorney. A misguided superior court judge. All of it can and does routinely affect the lives of ordinary citizens. But, occasionally, a wrong is righted and a victim becomes the victor. After five long years, Will Walters may finally get one of his most prized wishes.

“I just want my life back.”