A Portland strip club made its dancers pay for the privilege of showing up to work — and when one dancer sued, a co-owner cut off her income at another venue and put his reasoning in writing.

Zoe Hollis danced at Sassy’s, a Portland strip club operated by R&R Restaurants, Inc., approximately three to five times a week from June 2017 until March 2019. Hollis was handed a contract calling them an “independent contractor.” That label was the foundation of a system designed to extract maximum labor at minimum legal cost.

Sassy’s collected “house fees” from dancers for every single shift they worked. On top of that, dancers were required to tip the club’s bartenders, DJs, and bouncers — and the court record notes those workers would “make working there miserable” if they weren’t tipped. Hollis paid these fees and tips out of whatever money they earned from customers, while Sassy’s pocketed the fees, kept the overhead, and faced zero payroll obligation.

On June 28, 2021, Hollis filed a collective action lawsuit alleging that Sassy’s illegally misclassified its dancers as independent contractors to dodge minimum wage and overtime obligations. Six days later, the retaliation began.

They Charged You to Work, Then Said You Weren’t Working

The “independent contractor” designation Sassy’s used is the oldest trick in the employer playbook: call workers freelancers, hand them a contract that says so, and watch the labor protections evaporate. But courts use an “economic realities” test to cut through that paperwork — and the facts at Sassy’s tell a different story than the contract did.

Sassy’s controlled customer entry, set the minimum prices dancers could charge, dictated the order in which dancers removed their clothing on stage — first song “teasing,” second song remove top, third song remove bottoms — and assigned weekly schedules. The club hired and managed the DJs, bartenders, and bouncers Hollis depended on. Hollis could not select music freely; only from a pre-approved list when no DJ was present.

Hollis’s work schedule was even reduced as punishment for a personal grooming choice: management cut Hollis’s shifts because they chose to wear their natural hair instead of a wig. This is not the hallmark of an independent freelancer setting their own terms. This is an employer exercising control over a worker’s body.

The Non-Financial Ledger

What the settlement number won’t tell you. The cost counted in dignity, autonomy, and silenced voices.

You Paid to Show Up. Then You Got Punished for Asking Why.

The house fee system at Sassy’s inverted the basic logic of employment. Workers did not receive wages. They arrived, paid for access to the stage, performed for hours, tipped out the club’s own staff, and then kept whatever was left from customer tips. If it was a slow night, they could walk away having paid more than they earned. Every shift carried personal financial risk that belonged entirely to the dancer — while the club carried zero payroll risk and collected its fees regardless of how busy it was.

This is not an abstract accounting problem. This is a worker arriving at a job, handing money to the business before they’ve made a single dollar, and then performing labor under the club’s complete operational control. Sassy’s told dancers what music they could play, what order to remove their clothing, how to handle disputes, how to bundle their dollar bills, and how their hair and makeup needed to look. When Hollis wore their natural hair instead of a wig, management cut their schedule. A business that punishes a worker’s grooming choices by reducing their income is exercising employer power — regardless of what the contract calls them.

The physical and psychological weight of that control compounds over time. Hollis danced three to five times a week for nearly two years under these conditions. That is hundreds of shifts during which they were subject to termination for rule violations, required to interact with customers in ways the club dictated, and financially dependent on income they did not control. The “independent contractor” label offered no independence whatsoever. It only removed the legal protections workers are entitled to.

Speaking Up Cost Hollis Another Job — Immediately

Hollis had performed at Dante’s Sinferno Cabaret twice before the lawsuit was filed. On June 22, 2021, six days before the lawsuit, Hollis received a confirmation email for a third scheduled performance on July 25 and a solicitation for future slots. The club wanted them back. Then the lawsuit landed, and within 21 days, Frank Faillace — a partner in both Sassy’s and Dante’s — sent Hollis an email canceling the performance and barring them from all future work at Dante’s.

Faillace did not claim Hollis had done anything wrong at Dante’s. He did not cite performance quality, scheduling conflicts, or any operational need. He cited the lawsuit, explicitly and in writing. He told Hollis that their protected legal action against Sassy’s made it too risky for him to allow them to perform at a club he also co-owned. The message sent to every other worker watching this happen was unmistakable: file a complaint, lose work. The retaliation was so transparent that the appeals court found the defense’s “legitimate business decision” framing legally unpersuasive on its face.

Hollis had been building an income stream across multiple venues, which is exactly what someone classified as an “independent contractor” is supposedly free to do. The moment they asserted their legal rights, that income stream was severed — by the same person whose business practices were under scrutiny. This was punishment for speaking. It was punishment delivered swiftly, in writing, with the legal complaint cited as the cause. And it was designed to deter anyone else who might be considering doing the same thing.

The Chilling Effect Is the Point

Federal courts have recognized for decades that retaliation doesn’t need to destroy someone’s career to be illegal. The legal standard asks whether the adverse action “could well dissuade a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge.” The appeals court in this case applied exactly that standard. Losing a scheduled gig and being blacklisted from future work at a venue counts. It counts because the financial hit is real, and because the message broadcast to the wider community of workers is real.

Strip club workers are among the most economically precarious workers in the country. Many rely on multiple venues, irregular bookings, and the goodwill of club management to piece together a living. They are overwhelmingly classified as independent contractors, which means they have no unemployment insurance, no workers’ compensation, no guaranteed minimum wage, and no formal recourse when a manager decides to make their life difficult. When Faillace cut Hollis off from Dante’s, he did it knowing exactly what that context meant. He knew that the threat of losing bookings is one of the most effective silencing tools available in this industry. He admitted in writing that he was doing it because of the lawsuit. The Ninth Circuit called that what it is.

Legal Receipts

These are direct quotes from the court record. Every word is sourced from the opinion issued by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on November 18, 2025.

“As you may or may not remember, I am one of the partners in Sassy’s. A few days ago we were served papers there for a class action lawsuit, of which you are the primary plaintiff. That makes things complicated. Especially since it is regarding the claim of being an employee versus an independent contractor as stated in the contract with Sassy’s. Since you would be performing at Dante’s as an independent contractor, that puts another business that I’m a partner in at risk for a lawsuit. Therefore, we have been strongly advised to not have you perform at Dante’s.” — Frank Faillace, email to Zoe Hollis, July 19, 2021, as reproduced in the court record

“This is a serious lawsuit [for] which the legal bills alone . . . could easily put Sassy’s (or any of our other clubs) out of business.” — Frank Faillace, same email, July 19, 2021

“FLSA-covered employers cannot take adverse actions against FLSA plaintiffs and then avoid retaliation liability by explaining those actions as attempts to limit legal exposure created by their alleged violations of the Act. In other words, a financial interest in minimizing liability does not justify bald retaliation.” — Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Opinion by Judge Paez, November 18, 2025

“Hollis was allowed to work for other clubs during the same period and did so for a couple of months… Sassy’s controlled customer entry, set minimum prices for dances, required dancers to rotate between the stage and the floor, and hired and managed DJs, bartenders, and bouncers… Hollis’s schedule was reduced because they chose to wear their natural hair instead of a wig.” — Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, summarizing the factual record, November 18, 2025

“Canceling a scheduled work agreement and barring a worker from future contract opportunities cuts the worker off from an income source. It deprives the worker of funds they would otherwise have been able to earn. Refusing to contract with a worker is not categorically less likely to dissuade that worker from making a complaint than termination or demotion.” — Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Opinion by Judge Paez, November 18, 2025

Societal Impact Mapping

Economic Inequality: The House Fee Is a Tax on the Desperate

The house fee model functions as a structural wealth transfer from workers to owners. Every dancer at Sassy’s paid fees to the club on every shift. The club bore no payroll tax, no overtime liability, no minimum wage obligation, and no workers’ compensation cost. The business captured revenue from fees while displacing all income risk onto the workers. In any given slow night, a dancer could pay more to Sassy’s than they received from customers — effectively working a shift for negative wages.

The independent contractor classification that enables this model is used systematically across the adult entertainment industry. Multiple federal circuit courts — the Fourth, Third, and Fifth Circuits — have applied the economic realities test to similar clubs and found that exotic dancers were, in legal and economic reality, employees all along. The court in this case cited those decisions as potentially instructive for the lower court on remand. The pattern is not unique to Sassy’s. The wage theft is industry-wide.

The workers trapped inside this system are overwhelmingly women and non-binary people, many of whom have limited access to traditional employment due to discrimination, caregiving responsibilities, or economic need. The independent contractor designation strips them of every federal labor protection: minimum wage, overtime pay, the right to organize, protection from illegal tip retention. Sassy’s collected what the court record calls “illegal kickbacks in the form of house fees” and “unlawfully retaining dancers’ tips.” These are not regulatory technicalities. These are workers’ wages, taken.

Economic Inequality: The Retaliation Tax on Speaking Up

When Hollis filed the lawsuit, Faillace’s response added a second layer of economic punishment on top of the wage theft. Hollis lost a confirmed booking at Dante’s and was barred from all future bookings at a venue where they had already performed twice and where the club had solicited them for more work. In an industry where income is pieced together across multiple venues, losing access to even one club is a meaningful financial blow.

The appeals court explicitly recognized this reality: refusing to contract with someone “is not categorically less likely to dissuade that worker from making a complaint than termination or demotion.” For workers with no guaranteed income, no unemployment safety net, and no formal HR process to appeal to, the economic consequences of being blacklisted from a venue can be immediate and severe. The legal system took until 2025 to even confirm that this kind of retaliation can be challenged in federal court. For every Zoe Hollis who files a lawsuit, there are workers who saw what happened and chose silence.

The Cost of a Life Metric

What Now?

Regulatory Watchlist

• U.S. Department of Labor (Wage and Hour Division) — enforces FLSA minimum wage, overtime, and tip retention violations; the agency workers can report misclassification to directly
• Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) — Oregon state equivalent; investigates wage theft and labor law violations at the state level
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — relevant if workers at Sassy’s or Dante’s attempt to organize collectively

The Bigger Picture

This case establishes that the boss does not have to be your current employer to retaliate against you under federal law, and “protecting my business” is not a valid excuse for cutting off a worker’s income because they filed a complaint. That precedent matters well beyond Portland strip clubs. It matters for gig workers, freelancers, and anyone working in the growing corners of the economy where “independent contractor” is used as a legal shield against paying workers what the law requires.

If you work in the adult entertainment industry and have been charged house fees, had tips retained, or faced retaliation for speaking up, the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor takes anonymous complaints. BOLI in Oregon does as well. The law, as of this ruling, is clearer than it has ever been that retaliation can take many forms — and that the person doing it doesn’t even have to be the person you filed the complaint against.

Mutual aid networks, worker centers, and sex worker advocacy organizations in Oregon and nationally provide direct support that bureaucratic channels often can’t. Find them. Connect with co-workers. Share this ruling. The legal record in this case is public, it is damning, and it belongs to everyone who needs it.