Washington ‘Bikini Baristas’ Settle $500,000 Lawsuit with City over Dress Code Ordinance

The City of Everett, Washington, has agreed to pay a $500,000 settlement to “bikini baristas” who were affected by a city dress code ordinance.

The Associated Press reported the City of Everett, Washington settled a lawsuit with a group of plaintiffs who had been seeking more than three million dollars in damages after a city ordinance forbade them from serving without wearing at least a tank top and shorts.

The plaintiffs claimed in the lawsuit the ordinance violated the equal protection clause by “discriminating against women and women-only businesses” noting “the Lewd Conduct Ordinance criminalizes the partial exposure or touching of female breasts but not male breasts” and that “the Dress Code Ordinance targets bikini-barista stands at which “only women work.”

The court found “This Ordinance clearly treats women differently than men by banning a wide variety of women’s clothing, not just pasties and g-strings, or bikinis” and that the city of Everett “failed to demonstrate how this disparate treatment of women is substantially related to the achievement of the Ordinance’s stated objectives.”

Complainants have argued unsuccessfully that the ordinance violated their First Amendment rights, but the Ninth Circuit Court ruled the servers’ attire did not constitute “‘expressive conduct’ within the meaning of the First Amendment.”

“Some countries make you wear lots of clothing because of their religious beliefs,” Matteson Hernandez, an employee of the Hillbilly Hotties barista stand wrote in a complaint, per the AP.  “But America is different because you can wear what you want to wear. I wear what I’m comfortable with and others can wear what they are comfortable with.”

The city has moved to “existing lewd conduct standard that makes it a crime to publicly expose too much of one’s private parts” and to require establishments to “post materials for employees with information on how to seek help if they are being trafficked or otherwise exploited,” per the AP.