Dancers under 21 suing state over new age requirements for Florida strip club workers

TAMPA - Dancers across Florida are fighting to get back to work. Several lost their jobs after a new law went into effect Monday banning strip clubs from hiring anyone under 21. Previously, you had to be 18. Now, they’re suing the state.

Supporters of the law argue the new age requirement helps crack down on human trafficking and protects the dancers who could end up being potential victims, but 19-year-old Serenity Bushey, one of the dancers who are suing, argues the law only harms her livelihood and wrecks her future plans she had to pay for college, buy a home and start a family.

The 57-page lawsuit against the Florida Attorney General argues the new state law banning 18, 19, and 20-year-olds from working at strip clubs violates their First Amendment rights.

"A lot of these girls, they are paying their way through college, through this job. That's how they're getting real jobs," Bushey said.

Bushey lost her job at Café Risqué in Gainesville on Monday when the new law went into effect. The same day, she, her employer and two other businesses in Jacksonville filed the lawsuit asking for an injunction to stop the law from being enforced.

"The only businesses that are affected are adult businesses and the only people who are affected are speakers, those who are engaged in the expressive conduct. When you have a law that directly targets speech in this way, we call it content-based. It's subject to strict scrutiny. Most of those laws fail automatically," Bushey's attorney, Gary Edinger, said.

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Lawmakers argue the new law deters human trafficking, but Bushey and her attorney argue it instead targets law-abiding businesses where data shows human-trafficking isn't a problem.

According to the 2023 Federal Human-Trafficking Report, the majority of victims are recruited online and since 2019 less than 1% of victims were recruited from strip clubs.

Meanwhile, Bushey, who's been working since she was 16 at various fast-food restaurants, says the pay wasn't enough to invest in her future.

"They were cutting my hours constantly, sending me home early because labor percentages were high. At Café Risqué, I had none of that," Bushey said.

Bushey, who's engaged, was planning to use her income to fund college, buy a home and start a family with her fiancé, but now those plans are on hold as she and eight of her co-workers fight to get their jobs back.

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"The result of this statute is not to target human traffickers. The result is it puts a lot of hard working men and women out of work," Edinger said.

The law bars strip clubs from hiring anyone under 21 that includes cooks, bouncers and even third-party contractors like repairmen. Edinger previously sued the City of Jacksonville over a similar ordinance to the law. That case is awaiting a ruling from a judge. He says the decision in that case will likely determine how this case plays out.

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