Florida City Backs Lawsuit By Women Denied Entry to Strip Club

Two women who sued when they were not allowed into a strip club in Orlando, Florida, last year are getting support for the government of another Florida city. The two women, Anita Yanes and Brittany Smith, say that a bouncer at Rachel’s Adult Entertainment refused to let them in unless they were accompanied by a man. “This case involves the validity of 44 local human rights ordinances,” wrote attorney Matthew Dietz, who represents the two women, on his Twitter account.  Dietz said that he hopes the case will “destroy stereotypes that unaccompanied women are prostitutes or just going to strip clubs to find and berate their wayward husbands.” But a circuit court in Orange County, Florida, dismissed the case, agreeing with the strip club’s argument that the case should come under Florida’s Civil Rights Act, not the Orange County Human Rights Ordinance. The club claimed that the civil rights law allowed them to discriminate against the women for being unaccompanied by a male companion, according to a report by WPTV in West Palm Beach. Delray Beach is one of those 44 cities mentioned by Dietz that has its own human rights ordinance. The city now plans to file a “friend of the court” brief supporting Yanes and Smith’s case. The city’s government will argue that its own human rights law would be invalidated by the court’s dismissal of the case. The Delray Beach City Commission on Tuesday voted to approve the brief supporting the two women. Miami Beach has also filed its own brief supporting the two women in their case. Local human rights ordinances broadly prohibit discrimination based on “race, religion, sex, disability, ethnicity, national origin and martial status,” according to Equality Florida.  In 2015, Delray Beach passed its own ordinance also prohibiting discrimination against gender orientation, genetic information, pregnancy and other categories. Photo By Gogirl18 / Wikimedia Commons