Five Buffalo Bills cheerleaders say they were forced to work Bills games for free , with only a $90 ticket and parking space as compensation, subjected to “jiggle tests,” and auctioned off as prizes at public events, according to a lawsuit filed by the cheerleaders on Tuesday.
While, according to the lawsuit, the Buffalo Bills cheerleaders were not paid for practices or games — or for up to 35 public events the must attend every year — they were forced to buy their own uniforms for $650 and must cover their own travel costs and expenses. The suit says that the Buffalo Bills and two management companies that controlled the Buffallo Jills, as the Bill cheerleaders are called, illegally classified the cheerleaders as “independent contractors,” allowing them to dodge New York’s eight-dollar minimum wage.
At public appearances, mostly for charities, the Buffalo Bills cheerleaders were instructed to wear bikinis and were “auctioned” off to the highest bidders . They were also subjected to “dunk tank” games at a gold tournament in which golfers competed for the chance to douse the cheerleaders in water, according to the lawsuit.
The Buffalo Bills and the management companies, Stejon Productions Corp. and Citadel Communications Co., have refused to comment on the allegations in the lawsuit, which also say that the cheerleaders were forced to endure harassing sexual comments and groping at games and events.
“I could not go back because of the harassment and the way we were treated,” said one of the cheerleaders , identified as Maria P., said at a press conference Tuesday. “I signed up to be a cheerleader, not whatever you want to call that.”
Cheerleaders for the Oakland Raiders and Cincinnati Bengals previously filed lawsuits against those teams , also claiming unpaid wages.
The five cheerleaders who filed the lawsuit worked for the Bills between 2010 and 2013. They are suing for what they say are their unpaid wages, with interest, after the Bills said that starting this year, they will begin paying their cheerleaders minimum wage.
The lawsuit also says that at public events, the cheerleaders performed acrobatic tricks in exchange for tips — but their employers took the tips and kept them.
The Buffalo Bills cheerleaders, their suit says, were given, “ an onerous set of rules dictating how the women could walk, talk, dress, speak and behave, both in uniform and in their personal lives.”
Those rules included instructions on how to wash their private parts.
“We had always dreamed since we were little girls of becoming Buffalo Jills cheerleaders and unfortunately it was anything but a good experience,” another former Bills cheerleader, Alyssa U., said at the press conference. She said the cheerleaders were subjected to “everything from standing in front of us with a clipboard and having us do a jiggle test to see what parts of our body were jiggling.”
Read the Buffalo Bills cheerleaders lawsuit, below.