Club’s Diehards Attacked for Trying to Dodge Bias Rule

A petition drive by a dissident faction of the elite California Club to circumvent a Los Angeles city ordinance banning discriminatory membership policies toward women and minorities drew fire Wednesday from public officials and opposition from the club’s president.

Forty-one of the club’s 1,275 regular members have written the rest of the members seeking adoption of a “house rule” that would have each member certify whenever he is billed by the club that he was not entertaining or otherwise using the club’s facilities for business purposes.

Getting Around the Rule

This, according to the letter sent out by the dissidents, would “remove” the California Club from the purview of the ordinance adopted last spring and avert a situation in which “women and members of other protected classes will become members of the club.”

The 100-year-old club has no women or black members at present, although President Lawrence P. Day said Wednesday that one black person has been approved and is awaiting a membership vacancy, and several women and one other black are going through the approval process.

The petition drive was organized by John M. Robinson, 77, a past club president who last spring circulated statewide a letter arguing for “the right of clubs to discriminate.”

Other signers included another past club president, Luther C. Anderson; a former club treasurer, Gordon B. Crary Jr.; former Los Angeles Herald Examiner publisher George R. Hearst Jr.; former U.S. ambassador to Ireland Peter H. Dailey and such prominent businessmen as auto dealer Joseph E. Coberly Jr., developers William A. Simpson Jr. and Eugene St. John, and investor Leland S. Swett.

The letter warns the members that unless they act now, “women . . . will have free access to all parts of the club--the Main Dining Room, the Third Floor Bar and Card Room, the guest rooms, and, presumably, with some restrictions, the Health Club, at all times.”

It further contends: “To provide appropriate facilities for women in toilets, guest rooms, and the Health Club may require the incurrence of considerable capital expenditures.

“The Club will constantly be subject to the surveillance of the city’s enforcement officials and subject to the risk of suit by any and every member of a protected class (under the non-discrimination ordinance) whose candidacy for membership is rejected.”

Mailing List Demanded

Day said Wednesday that the club’s board of directors had originally not wished to make a membership mailing list available to Robinson, but that he had finally demanded one under Section 8330 of the California Corporations Code.

Day said he and other board members of the club do not feel that the petition drive will be successful. He remarked that “many members” receiving the mailing from the 41 dissidents “perceived that their best course was not to respond.”

He said he has heard nothing from Robinson about how many signatures his group has collected since the Sept. 7 mailing.

‘A Lot of Effort’

Day said the club leadership is now committed to the admission of women and minorities, and “we are expending a lot of effort to conform to the requirements of the law. . . . We are expending a lot of effort to have this happen as easily as it can.”

Robinson, who is also president of the California State Club Assn., a group representing 120 of the state’s private clubs, could not be reached for comment. Both his Los Angeles law office and his home in Pebble Beach said he was away.

Crary, another signer, was reached at his office at E. F. Hutton & Co., but he declined further comment and said he would let the letter “speak for itself.”

Meanwhile, two officials who have been leaders in a statewide drive to integrate the membership of many private clubs expressed disappointment that the controversy had arisen.

Wouldn’t Be Found Out

The chairman of the State Board of Equalization, Conway Collis, who gave The Times a copy of the dissidents’ letter that had been provided to him, pointed to one passage in the seven-page letter that suggested that members would not be found out, even if they were to use the club for business purposes while stating that they were not doing so.

“It is usually very difficult . . . to prove a misrepresentation of intent, purpose, or other mental state,” the passage said. It suggested that the members would not actually be prevented from entertaining business clients, even while circumventing the ordinance.

“For people who see themselves as leaders of our community to engage in this type of deceit is absolutely unconscionable,” Collis said. “How can they look their children in the eye?”

‘Cover-Up Scheme’

Los Angeles City Controller Rick Tuttle, an author of the Los Angeles anti-discrimination ordinance that the dissidents are seeking to circumvent, said: “From what I’ve heard of this, it is nothing but a scheme to cover up discrimination against women and minorities at the California Club.

“These hard-liners, these extremists who are doing this are using some of the same tactics hard-line segregationists used to maintain their system in the South in the 1960s. . . . It failed then, and it will fail now,” Tuttle said.

Day noted that last June 90% of the regular California Club members voting approved a change in the bylaws to allow the admission of women for the first time. He said that even if many of these people change their minds and sign the petition, which he doubts will happen, the club’s board of directors would still have “many options” as to what to do next.