The Bizarre Law Michigan Has For Pants

"Hey, you. Pull up your pants! What's wrong with you? Don't you have a belt? No one wants to see your butt all hanging out and your tighty-whities all bunched up in your crack. Gross. Just pull 'em up and stop being a hooligan!"

That might have been what went through the head of Flint, Michigan Police Chief David R. Dicks back in 2008. As MLive.com quotes him that year regarding saggy, low-rise pants drooping around Flint: "This immoral self expression goes beyond free speech. It rises to the crime of indecent exposure/disorderly persons." It was apparently the citizenry of Flint who raised this issue, saying things like, "It's so disgusting ... It's disgraceful" and "I'm not interested in looking at anyone's underwear." Another concerned citizen said the crackdown on cracks was "overdue." Meanwhile, Greg Gibbs of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that fashion styles are protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — within limits.

At this point, the reader might be wondering: Hey, isn't Flint the place that had the contaminated water crisis? Yes, indeed — come 2014. But until then, and possibly now, saggy pants were a hot-button issue for the good folks of Flint. And by all accounts, the law against them is still on the books, though it has yet to be enforced.

As ACLU Michigan explains, Flint, Michigan's anti-sagger offensive began on June 26, 2008, when Flint Police Chief David R. Dicks delivered a memo to the police under his command decrying sagging as a breach of "disorderly conduct and indecent exposure laws." If someone's underwear is exposed, that'll garner a warning. If underwear is fully exposed, e.g., the waist of the pants is below the butt, that's a disorderly conduct charge. If the butt crack is visible, that's indecent exposure. Punishments include fines up to $500 and 93 days in jail.

Besides generating some decently comical headlines like Reason's "Flint, Michigan Battles Crack Epidemic" and The Columbus Dispatch's "Chief Won't Buckle on Saggy Pants Policy," the city's no-sagging law caused a bit of a hubbub amongst local saggers. "Everybody's talking about it," Newsweek quoted one 18-year-old high school student at the time. "I don't like what they're doing. I've been dressing like this my whole life." One 28-year-old sagger appeared to agree. "I've been sagging since the fourth grade. I'll be sagging when I'm old and gray," they said.

While some declared the ordinance dumb or restrictive, others took it as a racist move given hip-hop's long affiliation with poorly-sized pants. But for those in favor of the ordinance, it was simple. As Newsweek quotes 81-year-old Minnie Boyd: "Who in the world wants to see a butt in public?"

ACLU Michigan took up the charge against Flint, Michigan's law against no-sagging back in 2008, calling it "unconstitutional" and a "colossal waste of time and scarce resources." Because enforcement of the law requires police officers to ask folks to lift up their shirts the ACLU also compared the practice to "lifting a woman's skirt in front of the camera to expose her underwear and then telling her she is indecently exposed."

Police Chief David R. Dicks responded to the ACLU while speaking with the Detroit Free Press. "I don't see how a warning is a civil rights violation," he said, noting that he was "going to keep on doing what I'm doing." I guess I'm expecting a lawsuit," he added. Chief Dick's secretary, meanwhile, stopped answering calls related to the policy because it "has been blown out of proportion," Business Insurance quotes.

Lest you think that Flint was the only city to pass such an ordinance, Opa-locka, Florida did the same a year earlier in 2007. The law was repealed in 2013. "Since its inception, this law disproportionately affected certain segments of our population, including Black and brown men and women," the city said in a statement, per CNN. There's no word regarding whether or not Flint, Michigan did the same. Sources on Flint's anti-sagging law predominantly date to 2008, and that's that. So depending on your fashion taste, the next time you're in Flint, you might have to worry about more than tainted drinking water.