UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

┐ JESSICA HINES, individually and on behalf of all others │ similarly situated, │ Plaintiff-Appellee, > No. 24-3725 │ │ v. │ │ NATIONAL ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, LLC, │ Defendant-Appellant. │ ┘

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio at Columbus. No. 2:23-cv-02952—Algenon L. Marbley, District Judge.

Decided and Filed: June 9, 2025

Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; GIBBONS and WHITE, Circuit Judges.

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COUNSEL ON BRIEF: Damion M. Clifford, Stefanie L. Coe, Damien Kitte, ARNOLD CLIFFORD LLP, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Daniel J. Canon, Jonathan C. Little, SAEED AND LITTLE, LLP, Indianapolis, Indiana, for Appellee. _________________

OPINION _________________

JULIA SMITH GIBBONS, Circuit Judge. This case centers on whether Plaintiff- Appellee Jessica Hines is bound by an arbitration provision included in contracts she signed on three different occasions between October 2020 and June 2023. In September 2023, Hines sued Defendant-Appellant National Entertainment Group, LLC (“NEG”), an adult entertainment club in Columbus, Ohio, for failing to properly compensate its employees under the Fair Labor No. 24-3725 Hines v. Nat’l Entm’t Grp. Page 2

Standards Act of 1938, 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq.; the Ohio Minimum Fair Wage Standards Act, Ohio Rev. Code § 4111.01 et seq.; the Ohio Semi-Monthly Payment Act, Ohio Rev. Code § 4113.15; Ohio Rev. Code § 2307.60; and common law unjust enrichment.

NEG moved to dismiss Hines’s suit or, in the alternative, to stay the proceedings pending completion of arbitration that the parties contractually agreed to in their Lease Agreement Waiver (the “Lease Waiver”). Although Hines does not dispute that she signed three separate agreements to arbitrate, she argues that the agreements are unenforceable because they are both procedurally and substantively unconscionable. Agreeing with Hines, the district court denied NEG’s motion to dismiss and declined to enforce the parties’ agreement to arbitrate. We vacate the district court’s denial of NEG’s motion to stay pending the completion of arbitration and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I.

Hines alleges that she worked as a dancer for National Entertainment Group, LLC (“NEG”), an adult entertainment club in Columbus, Ohio, from approximately February 2014 to August 2023. Although NEG denies that Hines worked at NEG after September 2017, both parties agree that Hines signed three separate and identical Lease Agreement Waivers ( “Lease Waivers”) on October 28, 2020; January 8, 2022; and June 6, 2023.1 Each Lease Waiver is a single-page document containing two paragraphs with text written in roughly 11 point font. The second paragraph is an arbitration provision and begins with the heading in all capital letters: “MANDATORY ARBITRATION AND CLASS/COLLECTIVE A