Membership discrimination in California clubs

A state law against discriminating in the service of private businesses was gradually made applicable to social clubs that engaged in commercial activities.

The Bohemian Club was founded in San Francisco in 1872 as a journalists' social group,[1] but it grew to become a refuge for some of the most powerful men in American business and politics.

[2] The Unruh Civil Rights Act, adopted in 1959, and as subsequently amended, outlaws discrimination based on age, ancestry, color, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation and similar characteristics.

[3] Section 125.6 of the state's Business and Professions Code, which took effect on January 1, 1976, threatened disciplinary action against "any holder of a state liquor license who discriminates on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, ancestry or national origin," but it specifically exempted private clubs with "discriminatory membership policy.

[5] Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley on May 28, 1987, signed a bill sponsored by Council Member Joy Picus to ban discrimination at most of the city's large private clubs, based on "sex, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin or disability."

It said that "clubs which serve meals and rent facilities to outsiders are more like business establishments than intimate social groups and therefore have no right to escape anti-discrimination laws.

"[5] In 1965, the Jonathan Club was charged with "anti-Negro" and "anti-Jew" bias and a complaint was raised that the membership dues of Mayor Sam Yorty were being paid by city taxpayers to support such discrimination.

Six of the city and country clubs that discriminated in 1969 were listed in Los Angeles, five in Pasadena, two in Glendale and one each in La Habra, Long Beach and Upland.

[2] Smith wrote that a campaign had been going on for ten years to "quietly but unrelentingly" persuade "what has been called the 'last bastion' of anti-Semitism in America — the downtown men's clubs of the nation's big cities" to allow Jews to become members.

[14] To date, there have been no pressure campaigns or threats of lawsuits to force women-only private clubs to begin admitting men as members.

But a survey made by the Wall Street Journal in May 1976 "indicated that most companies felt any rules could be dodged," primarily by giving employees a salary increase instead of paying their club fees.

"[11] Also in fall 1977, two Jewish men were admitted as members of the Los Angeles Country Club—Sherrill Corwin, head of the Metropolitan Theaters chain, and Si Ramo, an executive at TRW Inc.[11] The membership of William French Smith, President Ronald Reagan's choice for U.S. attorney-general in the discriminatory California and Bohemian clubs became an issue for him before Smith's nomination was approved by the Senate in January 1981.

[19] In 1987 the Board of Governors of the State Bar of California voted to ban from participating in the annual Conference of Delegates any local bar association that patronized any private discriminatory club which excluded people from membership or use of its facilities because of their "race, color, creed, national ancestry, sex or sexual preference.

[23] In October of the same year, Prince Philip of Great Britain, on a visit to Los Angeles to inspect equestrian sites for the 1984 Olympics, turned down an invitation to an evening at the California Club when he discovered that his host, Mayor Tom Bradley, refused to attend because the club "prohibits women and has no black members.

The club also approved Ivan J. Houston, the chief executive officer of the predominantly black Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company.

"[28] On July 25, 1985, the Coastal Commission did order the club to adopt nondiscriminatory policies before it could expand its recreational use onto state-owned beach property.

[31] Kenneth Reich of the Los Angeles Times wrote that: The Friars Club dispute is uncommon only in that it involves one of the nation's most celebrated exponents of women's rights.

[31]In 1974, Ellen Stern Harris, vice chairman of the California Coastal Commission, was not allowed to join her fellow commissioners for an informal tour of the Carson Mansion in Eureka because the private Ingomar Club, housed there, admitted women "only on specified days.

"[4] The state attorney-general's office filed suit against the club in July 1974 after the Ingomar board of directors decided not to change the rule.

It did not involve membership, though, "since state law does not prevent a private social club from barring members on the grounds of sex, religion or race.

[11] The city sued the Brentwood Country Club in August 1987 to force it to stop barring women from its "Men's Grill" and golf course during part of the day.

[37] The first new members admitted under the new policy were E. Camron Cooper, senior vice president and treasurer of the Atlantic Richfield Company, and Linda Hartwick, a partner in the Korn/Ferry International executive-search firm.

But Betty Bryant Morris, associate counsel at Union Bank, found treatment of her membership application "raised suspicions among some that the club has no real intention" of taking a woman as a member.

[39] By 1988, however, "about a dozen women" had joined the club, one of whom was Brooke Knapp, an aviator who was the first pilot to circle the Earth at the poles in a private jet, but they were forbidden to enter the men's library, grill and bar.

"[35][40] Club attorney John R. Shiner said in June 1989 that the Jonathan would thenceforth serve women in the bar and grill, "no questions asked.

"[18] Dan Morain of the Los Angeles Times wrote: A few men have quit, some will not join and some groups no longer use it for social functions.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, for one, quietly stopped holding its annual party there in 1979 after several judges, including a black, a Jew and a few women appointed by President Jimmy Carter, protested that it was a symbol of discrimination .

[18]When Gloria Allred asked former California Governor Edmund G. (Pat) Brown for a membership application for the Bohemian Club, "I turned her down," he said.

[46] Jan Bradshaw, an interior designer, sued the Yorba Linda Country Club in 1988 when she discovered that women could play golf only in the afternoons.