Defiant Local Kiwanis Club Picks Woman

Emboldened by this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that women cannot be barred from Rotary clubs in California, the 12-member Kiwanis Club of Chatsworth elected a woman as its treasurer Wednesday in defiance of Kiwanis International’s standing order to drop her and another woman from the club.

Leaders of the club also drafted a stern letter to its parent organization requesting acceptance of the two women’s rejected membership applications and threatening to monitor Kiwanis International “to assure that no expenditures are made for purposes in contravention of law.”

By a unanimous voice vote at its regular meeting Wednesday, the club elected Woodland Hills secretary Laura Clary as its new treasurer, adding a symbolic gesture to its previously quiet challenge of the club’s no-women rule.

Clary and another woman attempted to join the club in September, but their applications were refused by Kiwanis International.

Defies Parent Organization

The club has accepted the women as unofficial members anyway. In response, the parent organization threatened to revoke its charter, as it has threatened to do with many other clubs that have accepted women. But Kiwanis International has taken no action against any of the clubs, telling them it will wait for the courts to decide a case involving a New Jersey club.

In a letter that club President Jeffrey Marcus read at the meeting, the Chatsworth club urged its parent organization to obey the law and avoid litigation that would be doomed because of the high court’s ruling.

“It is our position that any action taken to impede the installation of women members in California shall constitute a breach of fiduciary duty,” the letter said, because club members’ money would be wasted in doomed legal actions to defend such a policy.

However, a spokesman for Kiwanis International said the organization still has a responsibility to uphold its own rules.

Demand for Compliance

“The Chatsworth club entered into an agreement,” said Kiwanis public relations manager David Williams. “They have violated that agreement. If there is no change in the constitution and bylaws, our board has a fiduciary duty to bring that club into compliance or remove it.”

Williams said the bylaws could change when an amendment to repeal the prohibition against women comes before the Kiwanis International convention in July. A similar amendment, supported by the Kiwanis executive staff last year, was defeated by club delegates by a margin of 53% to 47%.

Marcus said he does not expect the required two-thirds of the International’s delegates to vote for the change in the rules.

Instead, he said, the Chatsworth group is making its stand on the Supreme Court decision in the case of the Duarte Rotary Club.

The high court ruled Monday that, because of the public nature of its activities and its links to business, the Rotary Club has no constitutional protection from the state’s Unruh Act, which prohibits business organizations from discriminating on the basis of sex, race, religion, ancestry or national origin.

Effect of Ruling

Attorney Ron Clary, a Woodland Hills Kiwanian and the husband of Laura Clary, told the Chatsworth club Wednesday that he believes this means the international will have to allow women to join California clubs.

Although a memo written this week by Kiwanis International’s attorneys conceded that the ruling would undoubtedly apply to Kiwanis as well as Rotary, Williams noted that the organization could raise other legal issues to block California clubs from admitting women.

“If our members direct our officers to take a certain action, that action will have to be taken,” Williams said. “Attorneys will come up with arguments to make in the courts.”