UPDATE — (WMAL) Ocean City has responded to earlier press reports that suggested beach patrol officers wouldn’t stop female sunbathers from going topless:

EARLIER REPORTING

OCEAN CITY, MD — (AP) Women who sunbathe topless at a Maryland resort town used to get a scolding from beach patrol officers, but that has changed.

WBOC-TV reports Capt. Butch Arbin, head of Ocean City Beach Patrol, said in a memo Tuesday that workers should document complaints of toplessness, but they shouldn’t approach topless women – even if beachgoers request it.

Chelsea Covington, an advocate for normalizing toplessness, asked Worcester County’s state’s attorney last year to examine the law. He, in turn, asked Maryland’s attorney general for an opinion.

Ocean City officials are still waiting for the opinion. An opinion can take anywhere from one month to a little under a year to be finalized, Raquel Guillory Coombs, public information officer at the Maryland Attorney General’s office, told WMAL.

For years, Arbin says the beach patrol would just tell topless women “Hey, you can’t do that.” But without an opinion from the attorney general, he says they don’t feel like they can tell women not to sunbathe topless.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press and WMAL. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. (Photo: Town of Ocean City – Government Via Facebook)