Clubs in a Changing World

Large private clubs in which membership advances business connections and social status can no longer, in 1987, claim with comfort a private right to discriminate against women, blacks, Jews, Latinos, Asians or whomever.

Some of the clubs are recognizing and coping with changes in society that require changes in their policies. The Jonathan Club in downtown Los Angeles is in the process of opening its doors wider; the Hillcrest Country Club has voted to enroll women as regular members.

By their actions they are saying that change in a voluntary association is most satisfactory when undertaken voluntarily and generously.

The law, though, is moving to enforce what free will can be reluctant to bring about.

The California Franchise Tax Board has taken the first vote to prevent members of clubs with discriminatory admission policies from taking their fees as business deductions on the state income tax, on the sensible ground that other Californians should not be required to subsidize clubs they cannot belong to. Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp has ruled that the state has the right to revoke the liquor licenses of discriminatory private clubs, just as it can revoke the licenses of discriminatory public places, like restaurants.

And on Wednesday the Los Angeles City Council’s Personnel and Labor Relations Committee takes up an ordinance by Councilwoman Joy Picus and Controller Rick Tuttle to ban discrimination in private clubs of more than 400 members that provide regular meals and also rent facilities for meetings attended by non-members. The penalty would be civil; the ordinance, modeled on one in New York City that was upheld by the state’s highest court, would permit those claiming they were discriminated against to sue.

The ordinance is as inevitable as its goal is desirable. The wise club will adjust of its own accord to the world of 1987.