CPK said:
I guess what I was trying to say is that the Federal Govt. leaves all nudity laws to State and Local Govts. to enact. The Federal Govt. can enforce State and Local nudity laws if they so choose, but can allow nudity on Federal property because they don't enact those laws. They do make the park rules though and at anytime can enforce NYS law and say no more nudity. Under NYS law, we are illegal, but not under Federal law on Federal property unless they decide to enforce NYS law. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that we're not illegal until they say we are.
There's nothing special about nudity laws here! The Constitution leaves almost
all criminal laws to the states. With very few exceptions, what makes robbery, rape, assualt, and similar crimes illegal are
state laws. A piece of land being "Federal property" is no different than a piece of land being part of some city: neither affects the applicability of State criminal law within that land.
Nudity is illegal in New York State. Lighthouse Beach is in New York State. Therefore, nudity is illegal on Lighthouse Beach. It's that simple. If a New York State police officer (who does patrol the beach sometimes) sees somebody nude, that person can be arrested. Because they've been granted "concurrent jurisdiction", a Park Ranger can also make the arrest.
Now, it's certainly true that these people have decided not to
enforce the law. But a decision not to enforce the law doesn't suddenly make that thing legal. Let's look at another example. Some beach regulars smoke pot. The rangers know this. Unless somebody walks up to the ranger with a joint in their mouth (yes, this actually happened!), they aren't going to enforce the drugs laws on the beach. Does that mean that drugs are now legal? Of course not!
Here's yet another example to show the difference. Let's suppose a new ranger transferred to working at Lighthouse Beach. He knows he's supposed to ignore the law against nudity, but let's suppose he's very much personally against nudity and decides to give a citation to every nude person he sees. He'll likely get reassigned (or even fired) pretty quickly for that action, but are the citations valid? Of course they are (though a prosecutor may nevertheless decide to dismiss the charges).
One would hope that if the law enforcement agencies decide to start enforcing the law, they'll let us know in advance. But there's absolutely no requirement they do so. And there's also no sort of estoppel in criminal law, so the fact that a law enforcement officer chose to ignore some violation of the law today creates no obligation for the officer to ignore the same violation tomorrow.
