CA Civil Rights/Public Accomodation

[BrightNShiny]

Some friends and I are having a discussion. Let’s say a bar wishes to throw an invite-only party during the bar’s normally closed hours (say, early in the morning). The bar is throwing this party for its regular customers as a thank-you. The party is being paid for using bar funds, and the bar’s regular staff will be working during the party.

Now, for whatever reason, this hypothetical bar decides that only male regular customers are invited, and that female regular customers will be excluded.

My friends think this is legal. I think it’s illegal under California law, because the party would be considered a business activity, gender is a protected class, and there is no valid business purpose to excluding the women. But this isn’t my area of legal expertise, and I haven’t perused CA civil rights jurisprudence since my first year of law school. Anybody know whether this would be legal or not? If you have case cites, that’d be great. Thanks.

[Walloon]

Pamela Griffin, “Exclusion and Access in Public Accommodations: First Amendment Limitations Upon State Law”, 16 Pac. L.J. 1047:

In California, the Unruh Civil Rights Act contains one of the most expansive public accommodations laws in the nation. The scope of the law reaches beyond the traditional public accommodations coverage of common carriers and places of public recreation and accommodation to include ‘all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.’ In addition, the California definition of public accommodations is the most broadly interpreted general definition among state public accommodations laws. California courts have read ‘business establishment’ to embrace all commercial and non-commercial entities open to and serving the general public.

[Walloon]

Martin v. PGA Tour, Inc., 204 F.3d 994 (C.A.9 Or., 2000).

This point brings us to the greatest difficulty with PGA’s argument. It assumes that there is nothing public about the competition itself. According to PGA, the fact that its tournaments are restricted to the nation’s best golfers means that the courses on which they play during tournaments cannot be places of public accommodation. But the fact that users of a facility are highly selected does not mean that the facility cannot be a public accommodation. For example, Title III includes in its definition “secondary, undergraduate, or postgraduate private school[s]. ” 42 U.S.C. § 12181(7)(J). The competition to enter the most elite private universities is intense, and a relatively select few are admitted. That fact clearly does not remove the universities from the statute’s definition as places of public accommodation.

[BrightNShiny]

Thanks for the cites, Walloon. I’m off for New Years, but I’ll take a look at Martin to see what it says. It would seem to vindicate me, but I think my friends believe that this is a non-commercial activity since it’s a party held off-hours, and thus wouldn’t fall under the scope of a public accomodation law. They’re all non-lawyers, so I don’t know why I bother arguing with them, but there you go.

[DSYoungEsq]

@BrightNShiny

Some friends and I are having a discussion. Let’s say a bar wishes to throw an invite-only party during the bar’s normally closed hours (say, early in the morning). The bar is throwing this party for its regular customers as a thank-you. The party is being paid for using bar funds, and the bar’s regular staff will be working during the party.

Now, for whatever reason, this hypothetical bar decides that only male regular customers are invited, and that female regular customers will be excluded.

My friends think this is legal. I think it’s illegal under California law, because the party would be considered a business activity, gender is a protected class, and there is no valid business purpose to excluding the women. But this isn’t my area of legal expertise, and I haven’t perused CA civil rights jurisprudence since my first year of law school. Anybody know whether this would be legal or not? If you have case cites, that’d be great. Thanks.

In light of the fact that California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act has been interpreted to preclude even a “Ladie’s Night” where drinks are lower priced for women, I think it would be almost impossible for this to be legal in California.