California Club Will Vote on Its All-Male Rules

The elite California Club, an all-male bastion since its founding a century ago, announced Monday that its members will vote this month on changing the club bylaws to allow the admission of women.

In a three-page letter sent to “regular and non-resident members, and to ladies who are invited to use the California Club,” the club’s directors said they were “strongly recommending” that the 1,275 regular members vote to remove a prohibition on woman members and to delete masculine references of “his” and “him” throughout the bylaws.

The letter was dated last Friday, one day after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley signed an ordinance banning discrimination at most of the city’s large private clubs.

“While the California Club believes in the constitutional right of free association, its membership is composed of responsible citizens who have always respected the law of our city and state and will continue to do so,” said a statement issued in the name of the directors.

Vote Deadline

Club President Lawrence P. Day said the deadline for voting is June 29, which is in accord with a 30-day notice requirement that the California Club has for changing its bylaws, but also happens to be the day the city ordinance will go into effect.

Day said he expects that the vote will be affirmative and that when and if it is he will issue a statement welcoming woman applications “through the club’s normal membership proposal process.” Wives and widows of club members already may use some of the facilities, but not as regular members.

The text of the letter that Day made available to The Times nonetheless implied in some of its language that the club was moving reluctantly and only under the threat of litigation. The letter said the club had retained independent counsel to examine the legal issues involved and it indicated that the analysis had not been reassuring as to the chance of prevailing and the costs of protracted litigation.

“Throughout its 100-year history, the California Club has changed in many ways,” the letter said at one point. “It has survived devastating depressions, controversial moves of the clubhouse to new locations, the destabilizing effects of two world wars and the eroding effects of inflation. . . .

“Your board now strongly recommends this change in our bylaws and that regular members vote for approval of the proposed amendments. To wait is to risk litigation which, if lost, could endanger the club’s right of selectivity in our membership proposal process.”

Another paragraph in the letter indicated that the club will still maintain some all-male rooms. At present, women are not permitted beyond the second floor of the seven-floor facility.

“When new members join the club, they join it as it exists,” the letter said. “Therefore, the board plans no immediate changes in house rules or admissions procedures.”

City Controller Rick Tuttle, who helped draft the ordinance, pointed out Monday, when he was read this portion of the letter, that the ordinance calls for all members of affected clubs to have full enjoyment of club facilities, and that such continued segregation of rooms, beyond shower rooms, locker rooms and bathrooms, would appear to violate it.

But in a subsequent interview, the club president, Day, said: “We do not intend to be in violation of the ordinance. These kind of things will be considered at some point.”

Both the city councilwoman who sponsored the ordinance, Joy Picus, and the president of the Los Angeles Women Lawyer’s Assn., Sheila Kuehl, expressed confidence that once women are admitted to the California Club, all bars within the club against women will come down quickly.

“It would be incredibly mean-spirited of them to do otherwise,” Kuehl said. And Picus recalled that when the Los Angeles Athletic Club integrated its membership some years ago, it first declared that the grill would continue to be all-male, only to abandon that policy as soon as a group of women entered it and ordered food there.

Picus said: “I congratulate the club on its forthright attitude and am certain they will be successful at getting the required number of votes to admit women. . . . They will benefit from the added dimensions that women will bring to the life of the club. I think it’s really great.”