Kelli Stoops does not take Wednesday nights off.
Wednesday is ladies night, and Stoops, a waitress and bartender at Copper Monkey, knows she will bring home more cash.
“That’s my main money maker,” Stoops said.
But soon, Wednesday may be less lucrative for Stoops. This week, local bar and restaurant owners received a letter from Gainesville Equal Opportunity Director Cecil Howard telling them that offering ladies night specials may get them into trouble.
Any gender-based deals can be considered a violation of the city’s discrimination law and subject to lawsuits, according to the letter.
“If [a business] says we will give one gender a discount not another, it’s the same as giving one race a discount and not another,” Howard said in a phone interview.
No new laws are being written, he said. The letter just emphasizes a Gainesville city ordinance that says a business can't discriminate on the basis of gender.
“I tend to agree with the ruling on it,” said Dana Rogers, owner of Art of Billiards.
Rogers, who recently stopped offering ladies night specials because they weren’t profitable, said many bars have a two-hour special, which leads to women drinking as much as possible in that time frame. She also said some men use ladies night to take advantage of drunken women.
The Gainesville Office of Equal Opportunity has never received a gender discrimination complaint related to ladies night, but at least one student organization has expressed interest in making the weekly tradition illegal, Howard said.
The office does not issue citations or contact police, Howard said, but they do investigate whenever discrimination charges are filed.
“Our message is either equalize the playing field or do something different,” he said.
