July 24, 2008
Fee for all: Should cover charges in Vegas be equitable for
both sexes
By STEVE FRIESS
Before you roll your eyes and groan, hear Adam Russin out.
He’s not trying to get any money, he’s not trying to draw any
attention to himself, and he’s absolutely, positively not trying
to ruin your good time. He just has a simple question that seems
to have only one logical answer. And very soon, odds are good
the state will agree with him, and a lot of melon carts will
be upset.
Russin’s question: How can anyone seriously believe it is
not discriminatory to charge a man more than a woman for the
same access or service?
This spring, the 25-year-old New Yorker was staying at the
Mandalay Bay for a bachelor party and wanted to go with his
chums to the Moorea Beach Club, the resort’s topless pool. He
was startled to find out that the pool charges men $50 for admission
and $10 to women, so he filed a complaint with the Nevada Equal
Rights Commission (NERC) demanding the practice stop.
Oh, boo hoo, you say. Everybody knows that these pools and
clubs charge men more and that bouncers admit fewer of them
in order to maintain a balance that makes the place a favorable
flirting circumstance for members of both sexes. If they don’t
have established prices like Moorea, then they run promotional
ladies’ nights where women get in free or at reduced prices.
It’s a marketing tactic as old as rum and Coke. But it might
also be against the law. And a cursory reading of the text would
seem to support that view. In 2005, the Nevada Legislature amended
its nondiscrimination clause for public accommodations to include
“sex” along with the race, religion, sexual orientation and
all the rest. Weird that it wasn’t already in there, but that’s
beside the point.
By public accommodations, NRS 651.050 is so expansive that
Moorea could be included under subset (j) as “any park, zoo,
amusement park or other place of recreation,” subset (b) as
“any restaurant, bar, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda
fountain, casino or any other facility where food or spirituous
or malt liquors are sold, including any such facility located
on the premises of any retail establishment,” subset (m) as
“any gymnasium, health spa, bowling alley, golf course or other
place of exercise or recreation” or even, depending on the quality
of the racks on display, subset (i) as “any museum, library,
gallery or other place of public display or collection.”
Any way you slice it, Moorea is one, right? And if so, no
matter how badly you want more exposed knockers at the pool,
the law doesn’t allow you to engineer it through your prices,
does it?
When I called to confirm Moorea’s prices as Russin had reported
them, I also asked the woman why there was such a big difference
for men and women. Her answer was no doubt akin to the justification
for racial discrimination once upon a time: “If you go to any
other pool, it’s gonna be like that, too.”
Everybody’s doing it? That’s an answer? Oh, and she’s wrong,
too. Neither the Venus Pool at Caesars Palace nor Tao Beach
at Venetian have gender-specific prices. The only pools that
do are at MGM Mirage properties: Moorea, Wet Republic at MGM
Grand and Bare at the Mirage.
It’s apparently a touchy topic. MGM Mirage spokesman Alan
Feldman stood by a comment he made in my New York Times piece
from December on a similar complaint against the Las Vegas Athletic
Club, in which he said he didn’t view it as a civil-rights matter.
“I don’t think these antidiscrimination laws had any intention
of preventing something like this,” Feldman said at the time.
“In the circumstance of, Tuesday night is ladies’ night, that
is a business decision by individual businesses, and they ought
to be left free to do that.”
A spokeswoman for Pure Management Group insisted there is
no such price discrimination policy because cover charges change
constantly, but I was told for a recent LA Times piece that
their new Christian Audigier nightclub at Treasure Island charges
$30 for men and $20 for women. Nobody asked for a correction.
Folks at the Light Group, Pure’s rival, wouldn’t talk either,
even though while they have gender-specific prices for Bare,
they don’t seem to have them for any of their nightclubs.
That proves that the sky doesn’t fall if clubs and pools can’t
do this. In fact, the California Supreme Court ruled such price
disparities illegal all the way back in 1985. Judges or civil
rights panels in New Jersey, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Iowa and
New York have also barred such practices. State courts in Illinois
and Washington, though, allowed price differences as an acceptable
means of drawing desired customers.
The NERC can’t comment on the case by law, but Russin faxed
me documentation indicating his complaint is proceeding. He
said he was told to expect a conference call with the MGM Mirage
folks this summer. While it’s unclear what’s happened in that
aforementioned 10-month-old case against LVAC, the Moorea one
appears to be moving along at a steady clip.
Russin is prepared for the scorn to be heaped upon him for
speaking to me and because his case has the potential to radically
change the way Vegas clubs and pools do business. And yeah,
it is a bit of a cause with him; he filed a complaint in New
York that led a nightclub there that openly chose to allow more
women than men in from its rope line to post a sign disavowing
such a practice. Some of his friends have even scolded him as
a killjoy, asking him—his words—“What do you want, to go to
a sausage-fest all the time?”
It’s enough for Russin to feel the need to reassert his heterosexuality.
“I love women, maybe a little too much sometimes,” Russin says.
“I just want everything to be equal. I’m white and Jewish and
I want to be treated the same as if I were an African-American
woman or a Christian. I don’t believe Mandalay Bay is doing
this maliciously because they hate men. They’re doing this to
drive traffic to their pool. But that doesn’t make it right.”
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