Club Directors Rebuff Dissidents

The board of directors of the elite California Club has sent a letter to its members calling on them not to support a group within the club that is seeking to circumvent a Los Angeles ordinance banning discriminatory membership policies toward women and minorities.

In a letter to the club’s 1,275 regular members and more than 300 non-resident members, the directors labeled the 41 members who have proposed evading the ordinance a “small dissenting group.”

They said they had considered at length the group’s proposal.

‘Proposal Will Not Work’

“The board came to the conclusion that, for many reasons, the proposal will not work and is NOT in the best interests of the California Club and its members,” the board’s letter said.

“The board of directors suggests that those members who desire to respond to the dissident group do so by indicating no support for their proposal.”

In letters of Sept. 7 and Sept. 29, the dissidents, led by a former California Club president, John M. Robinson, suggested that the club would be overrun with women if it complied with the ordinance. The letters said the club would be exempt from the ordinance if it banned all business-related activities and if members certified that they would not take business deductions for club fees and entertainment.

The city ordinance that went into effect June 30 defines such clubs as the California Club as business organizations subject to the state’s civil rights laws.

Robinson’s group contends that once the club took steps to exempt itself from the ordinance, it could keep out women and others.

But 90% of the club’s regular membership voting last June voted to change the club’s bylaws to allow the admission of women and President Lawrence P. Day has said the first women are being processed for membership. Another downtown Los Angeles club, the Jonathan, has already changed its membership policies and has admitted several women.

Robinson argued in a statewide letter to 120 private clubs last spring that private clubs have a “right . . . to discriminate.”

Members who informed The Times of the board of directors’ letter Thursday said some members responding to the dissidents have told them in writing that if they have their way and business activities are banned at the club, they will resign. Many members use the club’s dining rooms and other facilities to entertain business clients.

There was a sign, meanwhile, that passions are mounting at the club as the controversy is prolonged.

One of the dissidents, Guardian Life Insurance Co. agent Bruce Bogue, sent The Times a copy of an Oct. 6 letter he sent to Day telling the club president that certain staff members of the club have been parking their cars in his assigned parking space. The cars have been locked and keys taken so he could not slip his vehicle into their place, he said.

“Is this an appropriate way to punish those of us who disagree with you?” Bogue asked Day.

A club staff member confirmed Thursday that Day had received the Bogue letter, but Day had no comment on it.

Other club members contacted by The Times, however, insisted that the dissidents are not being harassed and said they were unaware that Bogue had an assigned parking space.

The directors’ letter bluntly told the club’s membership that the Robinson group’s “letters were not authorized and not approved by the board of directors.”