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The
California State Supreme Court gave a victory to gay and
lesbian couples when it ruled Monday against a golf country
club that had refused to give a lesbian couple the same
membership benefits given to married heterosexual couples.
B. Birgit
Koebke and Kendall E. French, a lesbian couple who have been
domestic partners for 12 years, sued the Bernardo Heights
Country Club of San Diego County. Koebke, who paid an
$18,000 membership in 1987, wanted French to get the same
treatment as spouses of members, but the club refused.
Members’ spouses, children under 22 and grandchildren can
pay golf at the club for free, but unmarried guests have to
pay $40 to $75 a round and can play only six times a year.
The ruling
revolved around the state’s domestic partnership law, which
passed the state Legislature in 2003 and took effect Jan. 1,
2005, and grants same-sex couples (and heterosexual elderly
couples) nearly the same
responsibilities and benefits as married spouses, ranging
from access to divorce court to liability for a partner's
debts.
"The Legislature has made it abundantly clear than an
important goal of the Domestic Partner Act is to create
substantial legal equality between domestic partners and
spouses," Associate Justice Carlos Moreno wrote for a
five-judge majority. "We interpret this language to mean
that there shall be no discrimination in the treatment of
registered domestic partners and spouses."
The Supreme Court ruling is being broadly interpreted to mean
that all California business must offer registered same-sex
couples the same benefits they offer to married couples.
Same-sex marriage is not allowed in the state.
"For
registered domestic partners, it means when they walk into a
business, they are entitled to be treated the same way as
spouses are," said Jon Davidson, legal director for Lambda
Legal Defense Fund, which argued the case.
In the
country club case, the Supreme Court ruling sends it back to
San Diego County Superior Court to determine whether
Bernardo Height’s membership policy was applied in a
discriminatory fashion.
That move
upheld an earlier ruling by a San Diego appeals court, which
said that there was some evidence that the club had extended
benefits to heterosexual unmarried couples that were not
given to the gay couple, the San Diego Union-Tribune said.
The court gave an example of the club extending family
benefits to the fiancée of a member prior to their marriage.
The non-golfing female partner of a male club member was
also extended privileges, the court said, while the two
women were repeatedly denied in a case that goes back to
1998.
“We aren’t
activists, we aren’t politically charged,” said Koebke, who
pays $500 a month in membership fee. “We just wanted to play
golf together and we just really felt we had every human
right to do that.”
In its
ruling the Supreme Court gave some insight into the
mentality of the country club’s board of directors in
denying benefits to the lesbian couple.
“There
was significant evidence that BHCC’s directors were
motivated by animus toward plaintiffs because of their
sexual orientation, including evidence of BHCC’s
inconsistent application of the spousal benefit policy to
its unmarried heterosexual members while, at the same time,
it repeatedly rebuffed plaintiffs’ efforts to modify the
policy to include them,” the court said.
It cited
one example where Koebke stated in a deposition that the
Board’s denial of spousal benefits to French was motivated
by its fear that if it did so “it would open the floodgates”
to homosexuals and BHCC would become known as “gay
friendly,” which a member of the board communicated to her
was not “a desire or direction of the Club.”
Koebke’s
sexual orientation became a subject of speculation and
discussion among BHCC members, the court said in its 45-page
opinion. One BHCC member, Judy Stillman, overheard another
member say that perhaps the men in his group “should get
[the plaintiffs] to put on a skit to show us how they do it
with toys, and charge an admission price, to help pay for
the lawsuit.”
John
Shiner, the lawyer representing Bernardo Heights, said
Monday, “The club will take whatever action is necessary to
comply with the decision of the Supreme Court.” He would not
elaborate on whether that means the club will start giving
spousal privileges to the partners of gay or lesbian
members, AP said.
The vote
in the case was 5-1, with one justice concurring with some
parts of the opinion and dissenting in others.
Aug.
1, 2005
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