Mideast: Losing Ground : Wave of Common Sense
A gentle wave of common sense has washed away the Jonathan Club’s plans to spread out on the beach at Santa Monica.
The club applied earlier this year for a permit to expand its beach annex, which is built on land leased from the state, to add some paddle tennis courts and parking spaces to the facility.
For the record:
12:00 a.m. Dec. 23, 1985 Jonathan Club
Los Angeles Times Monday December 23, 1985 Home Edition Metro Part 2 Page 4 Column 4 No Desk 10 inches; 356 words Type of Material: Letter to the Editor; Correction
It would appear the Los Angeles Times has engaged in a pattern of inaccurate and biased coverage with respect to the issues surrounding the Jonathan Club’s proposed expansion of its beach facility. Your editorial, “Wave of Common Sense” (Oct. 23), twice states the club’s beach facility is built on land leased from the state. It is not. The existing beach facility is constructed on land owned entirely by the club. The controversy between the club and Coastal Commission relates only to certain undeveloped parcels of land leased to the club as part of a settlement of a property line dispute with the state.
A more recent example was an article entitled: “Next Target: Sex Bias in Men’s Club,” (Nov. 15), which appeared on the front page. The article refers to Fredric Woocher “of the Western Center for Law in the Public Interest, which joined a discrimination suit against Los Angeles’ Jonathan Club. “ The club has never been involved in a discrimination suit and has not been sued by the Center. The article continues, on Page 34, “(t)he government refused the permit because, it charged, the club admits no minorities or women.” This charge was never made. In fact, to the contrary, both the attorney for the state and the Court concurred there was no evidence of discrimination.
All of this is a matter of public record and the articles are simply the result of sloppy journalism;. The authors apparently rushed with such abandon to reach their conclusions, they neglected to grasp the facts. This not only renders the motivation behind the articles highly suspect, but does considerable disservice to your responsibility of accurately informing the public.
No one denies your right to report and editorialize as you see fit. However, misstatements of fact, particularly on matters of public record, are quite another issue. Your concern with accuracy would suggest a correction of the record and future attention to factual detail.
JOHN R. SHINER
General Counsel
Jonathan Club
(Editor’s Note: The Times erred in saying that the Jonathan Club’s Santa Monica annex is on beach property leased from the state. The club owns most of the land outright. State Coastal Commission records show that about half of its parking spaces are on leased land.
The Nov. 15 article saying that a discrimination suit had been filed against the club was in error. The suit was filed by the club against the Coastal Commission objecting to the commission’s demand that the club declare its members would be admitted without regard to race, sex or religion.)
The California Coastal Commission said, by a 9-3 vote, that it had no objection as long as the club’s facilities would be open to members who would be admitted without regard to race, sex or religion.
The club doesn’t talk about its membership rules, at least outside the polished precincts of the club itself, but whatever the rules say, the members tend to be mostly prosperous white males in a city with many people who are not. The club’s lawyers went to court asking it to overrule the commission on the grounds that its membership rules are none of the state’s business and that trying to make them the state’s business violates the club’s constitutional rights.
“Clubs are by nature discriminatory,” said Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Norman R. Dowds on Monday, going directly to the heart of the matter. That left only the question of whether the Jonathan Club’s brand of discrimination is prohibited by law. By implication, discrimination against, say, nude bathers or clumsy volleyball players might pass a legal test. Discrimination on grounds prohibited by the law of the state that owns the land on which the discrimination would be practiced would fail.
The judge’s gentle wave of common sense leaves the club and its lawyers a long way from shore, legally speaking, a plight over which nobody but club members is likely to lose sleep.
It can appeal, hoping to find judges less perceptive than Dowds who might order the Coastal Commission to let the club build its paddle tennis courts. It can argue the case on the merits, which would mean disclosing its membership rules and making a case that they are not discriminatory in what the judge called “prohibited” ways. But it probably cannot drop just drop the case because gentle waves of common sense have ripple effects. If the ruling stands up, the club could conceivably lose more than the right to put paddle tennis courts on public lands. The existing beach club itself is on public land and presumably subject to challenge on the same grounds used by the Coastal Commission. Another problem about which only club members are likely to lose sleep.
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