Canada's Supreme Court has ruled "certain" nude lap dancers didn't violate community standards, in spite of a previous ruling against the practice.
Strip club co-owner Therese Blais Pelletier was acquitted Monday of keeping a bawdy house despite erotic lap dances being performed in open cubicles for money, Reuters says.
"The dancers were required to follow (Pelletier's) rule against touching clients," the Court says in a statement, "but clients were allowed to touch the dancers' buttocks and breasts."
The Supreme Court ruling wasn't unanimous, however. It took a 3-2 acquittal vote, with the court's two female judges voting for acquittal. The 1997 court's majority opinion, written by Justice John Sopinka, had said lap dancing was indecent "insofar as (it) involve(s) sexual touching between dancer and patron."
On Monday, Justice Frank Iacobucci dissented from the majority on the same grounds and "because of the fact that the acts were not in private."
