Deaf Beauty Contestant Sues Miss America Pageant

A 26-year-old former beauty contestant filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that Miss America Pageant rules discriminate against deaf people by discouraging them from using a sign-language interpreter.

Julie Rems, a deaf social worker from Sherman Oaks, contended at a news conference that her chances of winning this year’s Miss Culver City Scholarship Pageant were thwarted last March when she insisted on using an interpreter despite rules barring contestants from receiving assistance onstage.

The winner of the local contest gets to compete for the Miss California title and a chance at the Miss America crown.

Speaking through an interpreter in her lawyer’s office, Rems said pageant officials “bluntly” told her: “ ‘This (the use of an interpreter) will hurt your chances of winning.’ It sure did. I didn’t even place.”

In the 1990 contest, however, Culver City pageant officials did not enforce the rule against onstage assistance and Rems was first runner-up in the pageant, she said.

In addition to the Culver City pageant, the complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by attorney Gloria Allred, names the Miss California Pageant and the Miss America Pageant as defendants. They are accused of violating the state Unruh Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of physical disability.

Allred said that she is seeking monetary damages and an injunction prohibiting pageant officials from refusing to provide interpreters.

Robert Arnym, president of the Miss California Pageant, declined to comment on the suit. But he said the no-assistance policy would be reviewed in September, when officials gather in Atlantic City for the next Miss America Pageant.

Joining Rems in the lawsuit is the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness.