EVERETT — The City Council is set to vote this month on whether to change the city’s bikini barista dress code after a federal court deemed the city’s old code unconstitutional in 2022.
If the council approves the amendment, employees at “quick service facilities,” including bikini barista stands, will be required to adhere to the city’s lewd conduct dress standards.
Last year, the city paid $500,000 in a settlement with Jovanna Edge, owner of the Hillbilly Hotties espresso stand at 4034 Hoyt Ave., as well as several employees, following a 2022 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo S. Martinez.
The settlement was the result of a lawsuit Edge and the employees filed against Everett in 2017. They stated the city’s barista dress code violated their First Amendment rights. Clothing is a means for self-expression, they argued: Dictating what they could wear infringed on women’s empowerment and freedom to wear what they want.
City staff briefed the council on the changes for the first time Wednesday. A final vote is set for April 14.
City spokesperson Simone Tarver said the amendment took a year to present to the council because the legal process takes time. The city has “limited staff resources and many different priorities at any given time,” she said in an email.
Lewd conduct laws require employees to cover “minimum body areas” — genitals and female nipples — with an opaque material.
“As a result of the amendment, the baristas will be able to dress just as they can anywhere else in the city,” assistant city attorney Ramsey Ramerman said at the City Council meeting Wednesday.
The amendment is meant to ensure stand owners are enforcing lewd conduct laws. The city could fine owners for not complying and they could lose their license after three violations, Ramerman said.
“With this amendment, the only real effect is on the stand owners,” he said. “No additional burden is put on the baristas.”
The city’s lewd conduct laws prohibit touching or exposing genitals, or any other public sexual conduct. This is in contrast to the city’s old dress code from 2017, requiring employees to cover the upper and lower halves of their bodies, wearing at least a tanktop and shorts.
As early as 2009, residents complained about baristas’ lack of clothing. These complaints were coupled with allegations of illegal sexual conduct at the coffee stands.
A 2013 investigation led to the arrest of two espresso stand owners accused of prostitution and exploiting a minor. Additionally, a Snohomish County sheriff’s sergeant was arrested for warning baristas about undercover police officers in exchange for sexual favors.
When Edge took the city to court in 2017, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction banning Everett from enforcing its dress code.
In 2019, however, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Everett, allowing it to implement the dress code.
Coffee stand workers filed to present the case to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020, but the court did not hear the case. Instead, the case went to federal court in Seattle in 2022, where Martinez found the dress code unconstitutional.
Ashley Nash: 425-339-3037; ashley.nash@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @ash_nash00.
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