ACLU-WA Letter to SPD regarding Denny Blaine Park Enforcement

May 16, 2025
 
Seattle Police Department ATTN: Chief Shon Barnes 610 Fifth Ave
PO Box 34986
Seattle, WA 98124-4986
 
Re: Unlawful Enforcement and Surveillance of the LGBTQIA2S+ Community at Denny Blaine Park
 
Dear Chief Barnes,
 
We write to express our serious concern surrounding the recent actions of Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers targeting queer and transgender beachgoers at Denny Blaine Park, a historic gathering space for Seattle’s LGBTQIA2S+ community.
 
On May 4, 2025, SPD officers incorrectly told beachgoers that public nudity was a crime in Seattle, commanded them to put clothes on, and trespassed a transgender woman who asserted her legal right to be naked in public. We are heartened by your agency’s swift response to this incident, which included your explicit assurances to community members that being naked in public is not a crime.¹ Still, members of the LGBTQIA2S+ report that this incident is part of a larger pattern of enforcement actions that appear to target the queer and transgender community’s legal use of Denny Blaine Park. As such, we request your dedication to protecting the LGBTQIA2S+ community by assuring that community members are able to use the park free of harassment and surveillance.
 
Denny Blaine Park has been a community gathering space for Seattle’s LGBTQIA2S+ community for over 50 years. In addition to offering a safe space for queer and transgender people to gather publicly, the beach has also served as a place of celebration for queer and transgender bodies in a world that often views such bodies as abnormal, profane, and dangerous.² Unfortunately, in the last several years, this important refuge has come under attack by a small group of Seattle citizens seeking to ban public nudity from Denny Blaine, effectively erasing this unique LBTQIA2S+ community space. Underlying the rhetoric of this group is the assumption that queer and transgender bodies are inherently dangerous to the safety of the neighborhood, and especially to children. This harmful stereotype³ is part of the historically rooted false dichotomy fueling much of the anti- transgender hatred permeating around the country.⁴
 
In addition to lawsuits and failed lobbying attempts, this group has recently focused its efforts on increasing police and private surveillance of the LGBTQIA2S+ community at Denny Blaine Park. Community members report that the incident on May 4 is part of a larger pattern of police enforcement of legal public nudity at Denny Blaine, including incidents on April 2 and April 4.⁵ According to news reporting, during these incidents, SPD officers told community members that Denny Blaine Park has become an enforcement priority for SPD and repeatedly tried to restrict beachgoers’ legal nudity.⁶
 
If true, this increased enforcement is deeply troubling, and we ask that your department immediately cease its increased surveillance of Denny Blaine Park and the LGBTQIA2S+ community. Public nudity is not a crime.⁷ The heightened police surveillance of the park is understandably seen by members of the queer and transgender community as a continuation of the violent legacy of policing queer and transgender people and spaces, especially under the guise of public decency.⁸

³ Christina Cabrera-Ayers, Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?, GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT, (May 5, 2022), https://genderjusticeproject.org/lgbtqia/wont- somebody-think-of-the-children.
⁴ Fact Sheet: Misleading Narratives About Transgender People and Restrooms, Locker Rooms, and Other Single-Sex Spaces, GLAAD (May 4, 2025), https://glaad.org/fact-sheet-misleading-narratives-about-transgender-people-and- restrooms-locker-rooms-and-other-single-sex-spaces/.
⁵ Vivian McCall, Seattle Police Trespassed a Trans Woman for Being Naked at a Queer Nude Beach, THE STRANGER (May 5, 2025), https://www.thestranger.com/news/2025/05/05/80043102/seattle-police- trespassed-a-trans-woman-for-being-naked-at-a-queer-nude-beach.
⁶ Id.
⁷ Seattle v. Johnson, 58 Wn. App. 64, 791 P.2d 266 (1990) (holding that expressive nudity is constitutionally protected free speech).
⁸ Joey L. Mogul et al., The Ghosts of Stonewall: Policing Gender, Policing Sex, TRUTHOUT (July 8, 2015), https://truthout.org/articles/the-ghosts-of-stonewall- policing-gender-policing-sex/.