The Springfield Mass Transit District (SMTD) has issued a ban on wearing "sagging pants" on its buses, local station WICS-TV reports. The ACLU of Illinois has been alerted to similar instances in the past, when a community has attempted to ban pants that hang below the waistline. The First Amendment protects individuals' freedom of expression, and as we have sometimes seen, the attempts to ban sagging pants also have racial profiling implications.
We aked [sic] SMTD's managing director Frank Squires about the policy. He declined our request for an on-camera interview; but told us the flyers to warn riders of the new policy have been taken down temporarily until they're redesigned.
