Fashion police: bans on sagging jeans raise the question: what happens when fashion moves from being merely objectionable to illegal?

• Author: Koppel, Niko
• Position: NATIONAL

Jamarcus Marshall, a 17-year-old high school sophomore in Mansfield, Louisiana, believes that no one should be able to tell him how low to wear his jeans. "It's up to the person who's wearing the pants," he says.

Marshall's sagging pants, a style popularized in the early 1990s by hip-hop artists, are becoming a legal issue in a growing number of communities, including his own.

Lawmakers in at least three states--Louisiana, Georgia, and New Jersey--have decided that pants worn low enough to expose underwear pose a threat to the public, and they are trying to enact indecency ordinances to stop it.

Since June, sagging pants have been against the law in Delcambre, Louisiana, a town of 2,200 that is 80 miles southwest of Baton Rouge. Offenders face a fine of as much as $500 or up to a six-month jail sentence. A law that took effect last month in Mansfield, a town of 5,500 near Shreveport, also mandates a fine or jail time for sagging pants. Similar measures are being considered in Atlanta and New Jersey.

But when fashion moves from being merely objectionable to illegal, constitutional questions about freedom of expression arise: Can the government tell you what to wear?

The American Civil Liberties Union doesn't think so. "This style may be distasteful to some, but do we really think it should be legislated?" says Benetta Standly of the A.C.L.U. of Georgia. "Our answer is no. We don't think this is in the realm of public policy. We don't think it's the government's role."

In fact, efforts to outlaw sagging pants in Virginia and statewide in Louisiana in 2004, failed because of such concerns. In August, the Town Council of Stratford, Conn., rejected a baggy-pants ban, deciding it was unconstitutional and would unjustly encourage racial profiling.

SCHOOL DRESS CODES

Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, is even more blunt in his opposition: "This is the kind of officious meddling in personal behavior that makes a laughing stock of the officials who do it."

But advocates of the laws say these measures are about enforcing public decency.

"It's a fad like hot pants; however, I think it crosses the line when a person shows their backside," says Council-woman Annette Lartigue, who is drafting a sagging pants ordinance in Trenton, N.J., the state capital. "You can't legislate how people dress, but you can legislate when people begin to become indecent by exposing their body parts."

While some communities are trying to crack down...