Posted on 01/09/2005 7:55:34 AM PST by Ellesu
The story seems, at first blush, petty and remote: rich folks squabbling at a country club.
The initiation fee at the Druid Hills Golf Club, now $50,000, is more than many Americans earn in a year. The imbroglio between the east side club's leadership, two gay members and the city of Atlanta ultimately involves people reserving tee times, using pool privileges and signing a tab at the club snack bar.
In a world of tsunamis and insurgencies, who cares about wealthy people hitting the links, whatever their sexual orientation?
The saga at Druid Hills, however, has awakened the interest of politicians, legal scholars and social activists of all stripes, in large part because the case turns on fundamental tensions straining American society — gay rights, states' rights, individual rights.
It's about two gay members claiming their partners should get the same rights as spouses of married members. A city commission agreed. The argument: Because gays cannot legally marry in Georgia, an Atlanta club granting special benefits only to married couples amounts to discrimination against gays, under the city ordinance.
The club's leaders, however, say the city's ordinance is unconstitutional and a private club has the right to decide how it gives certain benefits and to whom. They say the club only gives spousal benefits to people who are legally married. People who are not married under Georgia law, whether gay or straight, are treated the same.
How this case is ultimately decided will impact how future generations of Georgians view gay unions, private clubs and municipal government.
How such weighty issues became attached to this particular case is the shock.
"We're all surprised that this has turned out to be the test case," said Chuck Bowen, executive director of Georgia Equality, the state's largest gay rights organization. "I don't think that anyone foresaw it becoming as big a fight as it has become."
Lynn Hogue, a Georgia State University law professor and chairman of the conservative legal group Southeast Legal Foundation, agrees that a country club fuss is an unusual test case.
"The law of unintended consequences is one of my favorites," he said. "Everything is odd" in this case.
Late last month Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said she would fine the club if it didn't extend full spousal benefits to partners of its gay members, and the club responded Dec. 30 with a lawsuit claiming the city was violating the state constitution.
Word of the legal showdown made newspapers from Seattle to Philadelphia. Gay news Web sites and anti-gay-marriage Web sites have featured stories on Druid Hills.
The case has been fraught with complexity and strange alliances.
Somehow a city human rights ordinance, designed to provide equal treatment for gays and others at all public accommodations in a city of more than 400,000, now is in a legal death match over whether two people whose partners are members can show up on the putting green without their partners at an exclusive club that sits partly within Atlanta city limits.
Unlikely saga
Somehow a club where membership includes the husband of likely Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Secretary of State Cathy Cox has been transformed into a rallying point for conservatives like state Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), who probably will become chairman of the House Rules Committee in the state legislative session, which begins Monday.
And somehow the legal effort to toss out the human rights ordinance is being led by attorney Emmet Bondurant, a widely known champion of liberal causes.
Though the Druid Hills board of directors has held firm in opposition to the ruling, some members of the club have said they wish the whole thing would just go away. Others have said they think the club should give benefits to the two gay couples and be done with it.
In the gay community, some activists have argued quietly that putting the human rights ordinance on the line for white, wealthy country club members is a waste of energy and potentially disastrous for gays as a whole if the ordinance is struck down.
No one doubts that Atlanta's human rights ordinance faces a legal fight for its life. And the fight puts Franklin on a collision course with the Republican-dominated Legislature that, if she loses, could undercut the city's authority to enforce its anti-discrimination laws.
Ehrhart plans to submit legislation that would do just that.
Scholars at odds
Constitutional scholars are intrigued by the case and one of its fundamental questions: When is the right of a group to set its own rules a constitutional right and when is it discrimination?
The answer, for now, depends upon which scholar you call.
In the club's lawsuit against the city, Bondurant argues that the city ordinance violates the Georgia Constitution by overreaching municipal authority and by violating a section of the newly passed anti-gay marriage amendment. The city does not have the authority to tell private clubs how to treat its members, says the suit. And the city cannot force the club, or any other institution, to provide marital benefits to gay couples when state voters chose overwhelmingly in November to make providing such benefits unconstitutional, Bondurant argues. Bondurant wants unspecified damages from the city to compensate for the golf club's reputation being injured, and he wants the ordinance struck down by the court.
City Attorney Linda DiSantis has yet to file a response (she has 30 days to respond to the Fulton County Superior Court case once the city officially is served with the suit). Franklin, however, said publicly that after initial reservations, she is convinced the city's position in the Druid Hills case is defensible. Atlanta's defense likely will include this argument: The city enforces all kinds of ordinances on public accommodations, from fire codes to health codes to anti-discrimination laws. The human rights ordinance is no different, the argument goes.
The Southeast Legal Foundation's Hogue believes firmly the city will lose the case. He said though Druid Hills does earn income from business with the public, through weddings and rental of its facilities, the club is essentially private. He said the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken clearly on the issue of civil rights, and said those rights must be balanced against people's right to join groups that define them. All groups, from the Boy Scouts to a gay organization to a country club, are inherently exclusive — they limit their members, Hogue argues. They also each have rules defining how those members will be treated, Hogue said. The government has no right to intrude and tell that group how it must treat its members, even if other people consider it discrimination, he said.
Hogue said only public pressure, not legal pressure, can force private groups to change. He cited the integration of the Piedmont Driving Club, one of Atlanta's most exclusive clubs, which did not allow blacks to join until public pressure was brought to bear.
Private or public?
But Jack Senterfitt, senior staff attorney for the Atlanta office of Lambda Legal Defense Fund, a gay rights legal group, said the Druid Hills Golf Club is not a private club but a public accommodation, like a restaurant or movie house, because it does considerable business with the public. Therefore, he said, it has to abide by city ordinances against discrimination in public places.
"Ordinances similar to Atlanta's have been upheld across the country," he said.
He said the city has authority to enact local laws, and those laws can and do include anti-discrimination ordinances. A black person cannot be blocked from going into a restaurant. And the city's human rights ordinance of 2000 blocks discrimination against gays, he said.
Senterfitt said the legal and political battles that will arise from the Druid Hills case will have a long-term impact on how gays are treated in Atlanta and Georgia. Unlike Hogue, he made no prediction about the outcome.
"As to what happens next, that depends on a lot of things."
UGA law professor Dan Coenen, a constitutional expert, said he has not followed the specifics of the Druid Hills case, but these legal issues have come up in state and federal cases for years regarding the line between a group's right to privacy and a government's authority to enforce laws against what it defines as discrimination.
He said the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the right of "freedom of association" at the same time that it upheld civil rights laws forbidding discrimination in various places, including public accommodations. Private groups, from churches to political parties to country clubs, have the right to associate — or not associate — with whomever they like, as long as they are not public accommodations. But in this complex society, that distinction can be difficult to discern, Coenen said. In one famous case, the U.S. Supreme Court found a Moose Lodge in Pennsylvania had the right not to serve a black man at its bar. In another case, it forced the Jaycees to open membership to women.
The central question, Coenen said, is, "How far does this right to be left alone go?"
In the case of Druid Hills, no one is sure yet.
Atlanta and Shirley Franklin meddling in a private organization's affairs. The city also just implemented a preference to companies on contracts that pay a minimum (oh so living wage) of at least $10.50.
First thing they need to do is get rid of those two members.
Gays are notoriously promiscuous. If these people are allowed to bring in their partners the other single members should get spousal benefits for their Girlfriends since homosexual partners arent bonded by marriage they could change their Boyfriend every day and bring a new one. Same as a member could bring in a different girlfriend every day.
The whole crux of this thing is its Bullsheet. Just another boatload of crap brought up by the fruits.
Translation: the gay lobby thought Druid Hills would succumb to their blackmail attempt and roll over.
They'd also have to set up private bathroom stalls where gay members could have their anonymous trysts.
I will call and get us a tee time considering how nice it is here today. :) I think the club will win personally.
I agree. And the determination is simple.
If tax money adn thus the taxpayers do not have their name on the title as an owner or member, then it is private.
Discrimination is a right protect by both the Amendment I and Amendment IX.
Whether discrimintation is good business or not is up to free people, living and working in a capitalistic society to determine through their day to day financial and purchasing decisions.
Maybe they could get by cheaper if they just cut Glory holes in the stalls they have.
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