Measure to Ban Bias at Private Clubs Advances

A Los Angeles ordinance that would ban discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, ancestry or national origin at most of the city’s large private clubs sailed through a City Council committee Thursday, and its sponsor said she hopes it will win approval of the full council by the end of the month.

Councilwoman Joy Picus said she is not inclined to change her proposal in any respect, despite testimony at the committee hearing by some who called for a broader measure, affecting smaller clubs, and setting higher penalties for violations.

As it stands, the ordinance would apply only to clubs with more than 400 members, which provide regular meals and which rent facilities and take payments for meetings attended by non-members. Either a person claiming discrimination or the city attorney’s office would be allowed to take court action to enforce the ordinance. Fines of at least $250 and treble actual damages could be assessed for violations.

Proponents have said the ordinance would cover such major clubs in the city as the California Club, Jonathan Club and Los Angeles Country Club, as well as others meeting its criteria.

Passage in the Personnel and Labor Relations Committee came on a 2-0 vote, with Picus and Councilwoman Gloria Molina casting the votes.

No one appeared in opposition to the measure, drafted by City Controller Rick Tuttle and modeled on a similar ordinance adopted by New York City, which has been upheld in that state’s highest court.

Club Has Reservations

However, the general counsel of the Jonathan Club, which decided just last week to admit women on the same basis as men in the future, did write a letter to Picus expressing some reservations. The attorney, John R. Shiner, suggested that local action is preempted by the state’s Unruh Act and, to some extent, by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week upholding women membership in the Duarte Rotary Club.

Shiner’s point on preemption was challenged, however, by both Tuttle and a representative of the city attorney’s office, Lewis Gutierrez. They said they are sure the city is legally empowered to act.

Tuttle rejected as “nonsense” suggestions that the city delay action to give clubs such as the Jonathan Club a chance to integrate on their own. “We need this proposed law to enforce the civil rights of women and minorities in clubs that refuse to open their memberships,” he said at the hearing.

In other testimony, Los Angeles Urban League consultant Paul Stockton read a message from that group’s president, John W. Mack, urging that the ordinance be changed to set a $1-million minimum penalty for each violation and to make it applicable to clubs with 100 or more members, instead of 400.

Allred Applies

Attorney Gloria Allred, who has applied to become the first regular woman member of the Friars Club in Beverly Hills and will be interviewed by the membership committee there May 18, told the hearing that the ordinance will show that Los Angeles fully supports equality for all its people.

Noting that the head of the California State Club Assn., John M. Robinson, had recently defended what he termed the right of private clubs to discriminate and had lamented that discrimination had become a dirty word, Allred declared:

“Yes, Mr. Robinson, the dirty little secret of discrimination is out and it can’t be put back into the closet. We can and must have an ordinance in Los Angeles . . . which will provide women and minorities with protection against discrimination and the power to take action against those who persist in their dirty little discriminatory practices.”

Also appearing were Maria Alvarez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund to endorse the ordinance as drafted; Richard Smith, president of the Los Angeles City Advisory Council on Disability, to urge that it be amended to also include the disabled under its protections; free-lance journalist Greg Roberts to urge tougher fines for violations, and Fredric Woocher of the Center for Law in the Public Interest, who said the Supreme Court’s decision in the Rotary Club case made it plain the Los Angeles ordinance would be upheld.