Auckland City Council yesterday argued at Auckland District Court that the parade of topless women riding down Queen St in cars and on motorbikes breached its newly amended bylaw banning offensive public events.
Today, Judge Nicola Mathers said she wasn't satisfied that the parade breached the legal threshold of offensiveness.
The judge said opponents may find the parade offensive or tasteless but the fact that 80,000 people attended the previous event meant a significant number of people did not agree with the critics views.
The council's lawyer, Willy Akel, argued the local authority had every right to stop the parade as the bylaw was made under the Local Government Act, which allows councils to make bylaws to minimise the potential for offensive behaviour in public places.
He said the parade had little to do with freedom of expression and was simply an advertisement for the Erotica Expo.
But Jesse Soondram, the lawyer for the parade's organiser Steve Crow, said the council was illegally trying to apply a different standard of what is offensive than that of the law.
Mr Soondram said police and the courts had already decided it was not an offence for women to bare their breasts in public under the Summary Offences Act.
This meant the council was trying to apply a wider standard of what was offensive than that which existed in law.
Mr Soondram also said there was no evidence the Bill Of Rights was considered when the bylaw was passed.
Mr Akel also argued that it was contradictory that Mr Crow had put an R18 restriction on the Erotica Expo but opposed a restriction the council wanted to put on the parade.
Mr Crow told the court the Expo legally must be an R18 event as it sold material which the censorship classifications body stipulated was restricted to people 18 and over.
He said there were no similar legal restrictions on women baring their breasts in public as in the Boobs on Bikes parade.
He also said the parade was established primarily as an affirmation of a woman's right to go topless in public as per the Bill of Rights and only had a low association with the Erotica Expo.
Mr Crow has said the parade would go ahead regardless of the court outcome.
