A 58-year-old woman with a penchant for short skirts and a dancing style a town-run community dance hall banned for obscenity can dirty dance all she wants, said a federal judge who ruled the town violated her First Amendment rights by banning her.
Rebecca Willis maintained she likes wearing mid-thigh-length skirts but was never obscene in her dancing style, according to the Citizen-Times, which described a video of her dancing "a cross between Mick Jagger's pelvic swagger and a fish flopping on the end of a line."
Jon Sasser, the attorney for the 58-year-old homemaker, told the newspaper he had never seen any government in the United States "act in such an un-American fashion."
Court documents said regional residents complained Willis's dancing was sexually provocative, and town officials said she went "beyond the bounds of common decency" in banning her from town-sponsored dances in December 2000, the paper continued. Willis was backed in court by a professional dance instructor who said that seen on video Willis couldn't be construed as vulgar, lewd, or obscene, the paper added.
Willis sued on grounds that banning her from the town dances violated her First Amendment rights to free expression and association.
