EVERETT, Wash. — The city of Everett last week filed a brief at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to dissolve a December federal court ruling that placed a temporary ban on ordinances that impose dress codes for bikini baristas.
The appeal stems from U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman's ruling in December that said the city of Everett violated 14th Amendment equal-protections guarantees against women employees working at the city’s bikini-barista coffee joints, including Hillbilly Hotties, Grab-N-Go, Java Juggs and Twin Peaks.
In August, the city adopted a dress code ordinance that required employees at coffee stands and elsewhere to wear a minimum of tank tops and shorts. It argued that the dress code is necessary because existing ordinances against prostitution, lewdness, public masturbation and sexual assault are too difficult to enforce and that addresses “secondary harms.”
The city, at the same time, amended it lewd conduct ordinance that prohibited public exposure of the “bottom one half of the anal cleft” and “more than one-half of the part of the female breast located below the top of the areola.”
The bikini-barista coffee stores shot back with a lawsuit, claiming the ordinances violated freedom-of-expression rights.
In a decision in December, Pechman agreed with the stores, ruling that both ordinances were unconstitutionally vague.
The city of Everett in its appeal claims Pechman erred in her ruling, arguing that was wrong in suggesting that the ordinances were vague in describing what body parts can’t be on display.
The city contended that it made the right decision for a dress code after it combed through more than 800 pages of materials, including police reports, analogous studies and investigative records that found a causal link to secondary effects and the bikini-barista coffee stores.
Both ordinances provide a clear guidance to law enforcement and will not result in arbitrary enforcement, the city said in the appeal of the preliminary injunction.
“The City Council enacted the ordinances after carefully considering the scope of negative impacts associated with bikini-barista stands and determining the ordinances would assist in addressing those impacts,” the city said in a brief to the 9th Circuit.
