State sued over San Onofre nudity ban
Nude sunbathers opposed to an upcoming crackdown at San Onofre State Beach sued the state parks department Thursday, arguing that officials failed to hold public hearings before rescinding a long-standing policy that tolerated skinny-dipping at the beach’s southern end.
The lawsuit, filed in Orange County Superior Court by the national Naturist Action Committee and the local Friends of San Onofre Beach, seeks to delay plans by state parks officials to begin citing nude beachgoers after Labor Day.
“We want to bring attention to the public that the Department of Parks and Recreation doesn’t care what the public thinks. We think the public is behind us,” said R. Allen Baylis, who heads the local activist group. “After being there for more than 30 years, we deserve a piece of the beach.”
An area called Trail 6 at the state beach in northern San Diego County is known by naturists around the world. On sunny summer weekends, hundreds of nude sunbathers crowd the 1,000-foot strip of sand near Camp Pendleton.
The court case may bring clarity to the murky regulations and policies that park rangers have used since the late 1970s to police nudity at San Onofre. State law doesn’t allow for clothing-optional areas in parks. But under the Cahill Policy, named for a former state parks director, citations or arrests are made only after a complaint from the public and attempts to “elicit voluntary compliance.”
After decades of quietly allowing the Trail 6 beach to remain clothing-optional, officials in May announced that they would begin issuing citations because of ongoing public complaints.
Roy Stearns, a state parks department spokesman, said public hearings weren’t necessary to rescind the Cahill Policy at San Onofre. There are no plans to rescind the policy at other popular clothing-optional beaches, including Black’s Beach in San Diego, he added.
“This is our own internal policy,” Stearns said. “We had full authority to establish it, and we have full authority to rescind it.”
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