In the United States, individual states have primary jurisdiction in matters of public morality. The topfreedom movement has claimed success in a few instances in persuading some state and federal courts to overturn some state laws on the basis of sex discrimination or equal protection, arguing that a woman should be free to expose her chest (be topless) in any context in which a man can expose his. Other successful cases have been on the basis of freedom of expression in protest, or simply that exposure of breasts is not indecent (or similar terminology).

Laws and ordinances barring female toplessness are being challenged in federal courts around the nation. Each lawsuit, if it prevails at the appellate level, will legalize topfreedom in the following U.S. circuits of appeal (from west to east): 8 (California), 7 (Missouri) and 3 (Maryland). A federal lawsuit in the 7th Circuit (Illinois), was lost at the appellate level and the petition for review by the U.S. Supreme Court was denied. A preliminary injunction in a federal lawsuit in the 10th Circuit (Colorado), was won at the appellate level. In September 2018, after spending over $300,000, Fort Collins decided to stop defending their ordinance and repeal it. That effectively gave females of all ages the right to go topless wherever males can in the jurisdiction of the 10th Circuit (Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma states as well as all counties and cities therein).

Topless freedom by state California

From 1947 until 1971, women were banned from bartending in California unless they were the bar's owner or were married to the bar's owner. The case overturning this law was Sail’er Inn, Inc. v. Kirby, decided by the Supreme Court of California; it overturned the law but added a new provision banning women from tending bar topless.

Currently, state law allows public nudity that is neither lewd nor offensive.

San Francisco allows public female toplessness, although public nudity is banned as of February 2012. Women cannot be topless in San Francisco parks without advance permission from the city. A popular spot for female toplessness in San Francisco is Baker Beach, a nude beach located in the Presidio neighborhood.

In Berkeley it is a misdemeanor or infraction for a woman to expose "any portion of the breast at or below the areola".

Oakland's dress law says that women cannot wear "any type of clothing so that any portion of such part of the breast may be observed".

San Jose bars anything "less than completely and opaquely covered" female breasts.

In Los Angeles, UCSD graduate student Anni Ma, a "Free the Nipple" protester, was arrested for indecent exposure at a Bernie Sanders rally on March 13, 2014, when she removed masking tape covering her nipples. She has filed a federal lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department. Her attorney claims she was never "nude" and that California's indecent exposure law applies only to genitals, not breasts. She is also suing for constitutional violations, gender discrimination and violations of federal civil rights laws. She was topless at a Bernie Sanders campaign rally, Saturday, March 28, 2016, in Phoenix, and she was led to the back of the venue without incident.

The Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles, in 1972, was home to a naturist resort that scandalized the community, attracted cameras and spurred LA to ban nudity. Venice Neighborhood Council, in 2016, moved to make the area exempt from the city's ban on topless sunbathing.

In La Jolla, a community of San Diego, female toplessness is allowed in a nude beach called Black's Beach.

Colorado On February 22, 2017, U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson granted a preliminary injunction against a Fort Collins ordinance banning female toplessness saying it likely violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment due to gender-based discrimination. Britt Hoagland, Samantha Six and Free the Nipple – Fort Collins brought the case in May 2016. The judge wrote: the naked female breast is seen as disorderly or dangerous because society, from Renaissance paintings to Victoria's Secret commercials, has conflated female breasts with genitalia and stereotyped them as such. The irony is that by forcing women to cover up their bodies, society has made naked women's breasts something to see. As of September 2019, topfreedom is legal throughout the state due to a win in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Denver and Boulder do not distinguish between male and female toplessness.

Florida A Florida statute about both lewdness and indecent exposure prohibits the exposure of sexual organs in a vulgar or indecent manner but does not specify if female breasts are included as sexual organs, although the right to breastfeed in public is expressly protected. However, in 1999, the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal inferred that this exception indicates that female breasts are sexual organs,Kitts v. State, 766 So. 2d 1067 (Fla. 5th DCA 1999) and in 1976, the Supreme Court of Florida held that a separate statute about disorderly conduct can be used to prosecute female toplessness.Moffett v. State, 340 So. 2d 1155 (Fla. 1976). Furthermore, Florida courts have rejected equal protection arguments.

There is also another important factor to consider: the right of a woman to protest topless has been held to be a freedom of expression and not an equal protection issue. For example, in 2007, a Florida court acquitted a woman of indecent exposure for being topless on Daytona Beach because of the political nature of her stand, under the First Amendment right of free speech.

However, the biggest issue is that the Florida statute concerning lewdness (aforementioned above) not only adopted terms currently considered ambiguous (regarding female breasts) like "sexual organs" (biologically they are known as the "reproductive organs" of the human reproductive system, and because of this, only the genitals are generally included on this category), but also does not clearly assert if the concept of public nudity (including female toplessness) is (or not) considered by itself an act of indecent exposure (if practiced in a nonsexual context and also outside of official places already designated for nudity). And considering that the statute only criminalizes "the exposure of sexual organs" also "in a vulgar or indecent manner", people can interpret that "if it is not explicitly prohibited to simply be naked (or topless) in Florida in the absence of any sexual context, then it is not illegal to practice both naturism and female toplessness statewide".

Furthermore, the Florida courts' decisions (also aforementioned above) did not impede that both female toplessness and naturism (the latter in a smaller scale) continued to be commonly practiced (and tolerated) in some regions throughout the state for many years, and although there are only a few known public places in Florida where female toplessness is officially allowed (especially Haulover Beach, a nude beach located at Haulover Park, in Bal Harbour), topless bathing is tolerated on South Beach, along with a number of hotel pools in Miami Beach.

Idaho Toplessness is illegal in the state of Idaho per house bill 270, passed in 2025. It outlaws female breasts, transgender female breasts, and male transgender breasts.

Confusingly, the state statute expressly provides that breastfeeding and pumping do not constitute indecent exposure.

Illinois The state of Illinois does not explicitly ban toplessness, and its state constitution has included an equal rights amendment since 1970 that prohibits discrimination based on gender. Some municipalities in the state have enacted ordinances that ban female toplessness.

Sonoko Tagami, a GoTopless activist, was ticketed for toplessness based on a Chicago city ordinance and fined $100 plus $40 in fees. She filed a federal lawsuit challenging the ordinance, but the trial judge dismissed the case without a trial. She then appealed the dismissal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The appeal was heard by a three-judge panel on November 1, 2016. On November 8, 2017, a divided three-judge panel upheld Chicago's ban on female topfreedom two to one. On March 12, 2018, Tagami petitioned to appeal her loss before the United States Supreme Court. On April 16, 2018, her petition was denied.

Indiana Indiana is one of two states that explicitly ban female toplessness by law.

Kansas As of September 2019, topfreedom is legal throughout the state due to a win in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. The City of Manhattan amended its city code to allow female toplessness. But topless women can still run afoul of the state's lewd and lascivious behavior law.

Maine In 2010 women marched topless in Portland, Maine to protest against what they saw as a social double standard regarding male and female nudity, specifically the right to public toplessness. Police in Portland did not prevent the march, as nudity is illegal in Maine only if genitals are displayed.

Maryland On May 20, 2017, Captain Butch Arbin, head of the Ocean City Beach Patrol, instructed workers to document complaints of toplessness, but not approach topless women, even if the complainants requested it. Arbin changed the beach patrol's policy since the Maryland Attorney General has not released an opinion about female public toplessness in response to a formal request last year by a female resident and a topfree advocate who uses the pseudonym "Chelsea Covington." In response, on June 10, 2017, the town held an emergency meeting and passed Emergency Ordinance 2017–10, which made it unlawful for all females of all ages to be bare-chested in public, for purposes other than breastfeeding, in the same locations where it is lawful for males to be bare-chested. Violations of the ordinance will result in a $1,000 fine.

On January 16, 2018, Chelsea C. Eline, and four other women filed a federal lawsuit against Ocean City seeking preliminary and permanent injunctive relief. On December 20, 2018, U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar denied the preliminary injunction request. On April 7, 2020, Judge Bredar ruled on a motion for summary judgment that the city's ban on female toplessness was constitutional, noting “[t]he Court finds that protecting the public sensibilities from the public display of areas of the body traditionally viewed as erogenous zones — including female, but not male, breasts — is an important government objective.” “Whether or not society should differentiate between male and female breasts is a separate inquiry from whether it is constitutional to do so” (emphasis in original). Bredar said his decision is consistent with past rulings from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which reviews appeals from Maryland. The Supreme Court, he noted, has also maintained that physical differences between men and women — as opposed to stereotypes about men and women — can provide a valid basis for laws that treat men and women differently. But Bredar also said “[t]his Court questions whether laws which distinguish between men and women based on ‘public sensibilities’ can survive indefinitely. Such amorphous concepts are vulnerable to prejudice and stereotypes grounded more in fear than in reality.”

Massachusetts