Opinion ID: 2330508
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Source of Income

Text: Source of income, a defined term, means the point, the cause, or the form of the origination, or transmittal of gains of property accruing to a person in a stated period of time; including, but not limited to, money and property secured from any occupation, profession or activity, from any contract, agreement or settlement, from federal payments, court-ordered payments, from payments received as gifts, bequests, annuities, life insurance policies and compensation for illness or injury, except in a case where conflict of interest may exist. D.C.Code § 2-1401.02(29) (2001 & 2006 Supp.). Even a cursory reading of this definition reveals that it is extraordinarily broad. Blodgett argues that the Club's own statement of reasons for expelling him demonstrates that it did so, in part, because he had been using the Club's facilities to conduct business with persons who publicly expound racist and anti-Semitic views. He asserts that this declaration is direct evidence of (indeed, an admission to) discrimination based on a forbidden factor  a source of his income. The Club counters that taking action against a member based on the persons he associates with or conducts business with in the Club facilities is not the same as basing action on his source of income. It asserts that Blodgett was expelled for using the Club facilities in a manner that associated the Club with persons, organizations and views that were incompatible with Club values. It maintains that Blodgett has shown not a single fact to suggest that any of the Board members either knew or cared whether he earned income from his contacts with those persons and organizations. We thus must decide whether the third reason the Club gave for expelling Mr. Blodgett  his use of the Club's facilities to conduct business with persons who publicly expound racist and anti-Semite views  is a proxy for source of income discrimination. [6] When interpreting a different statute, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit observed that [t]he term `doing business' is not one possessed of but a single meaning in law. It is used in connection with many different situations and must be characterized and defined according to the context. Goldberg v. S. Builders, Inc., 87 U.S.App. D.C. 191, 193, 184 F.2d 345, 347 (1950). Agreeing with this observation, we turn our focus to the context in which the Club used the term. The Club's investigation was triggered by the Post article, which reported that Blodgett and Pierce quietly sorted through the details of a complicated new partnership over dinner in the Taft dining room of the University Club, where Blodgett is a member. The newspaper also reported that the two men haggled over control of Resistance Records. That article prompted letters from members calling for Blodgett's expulsion, while condemning the hate business that he conducted in the Club and expressing shock that he appear[ed] to have been in business with professional bigots. President Beck's notes indicate that on January 14th the Board of Governors appointed an investigative body to, among other things, review the factual basis of the article including Todd's professional involvement with hate group organizations. . . . At the conclusion of the investigation, the Board expelled Blodgett based, in part, upon his use of the Club's facilities to conduct business with persons who publicly expound racist and anti-Semitic views. (Emphasis added.) The Club argues initially that a Human Rights Act claim may not be based upon source of income discrimination alone. Rather, it asserts, `source of income' must be tied to some other protected class within the District of Columbia's traditional sphere of interest. According to the Club, [i]t is only when `income' is a badge of some other kind of protected class  e.g., welfare as a possible link to age, race, national origin, familial status  that the language has meaning in an anti-discrimination enforcement context. We reject these arguments, which ignore the plain language of the statute and the basic principle of statutory construction . . . that each provision of the statute should be construed so as to give effect to all of the statute's provisions, not rendering any provision superfluous. Veney v. United States, 681 A.2d 428, 433 (D.C.1996) (en banc) (quotation marks, internal editing, and citation omitted). [7] We do not doubt that defendants who discriminate based on source of income may often run afoul of other provisions of the Human Rights Act, such as those which prohibit discrimination based on age, familial status, or disability. We acknowledge as well that this court has not outlined the boundaries of source-of-income discrimination under the Human Rights Act. See Borger Mgmt., Inc. v. Sindram, 886 A.2d 52, 64 (D.C.2005) (remanding for further proceedings on claim of source-of-income discrimination); see also Feemster v. BSA Ltd. P'ship, 471 F.Supp.2d 87 (D.D.C.2007) (plaintiffs had not established a prima facie case of source-of-income discrimination under the DCHRA). However, there is no reason to think the Council intended this category of protection to be superfluous or redundant. The definition the Council crafted demonstrates that it intended the prohibition against source of income discrimination to have a significant reach. [8] Whereas a Connecticut statute forbidding discrimination in places of public accommodation has a narrow definition of source of income focusing on public assistance, child support, Social Security, and the like, [9] our statute has a more capacious formulation. Having expressed its intention to put an end to discrimination in the District of Columbia, the Council obviously recognized that race, gender, religion, and national origin were not the only historical bases for discrimination. Class conscious societies have often focused on the source of one's income, distinguishing, for example, between nouveaux riches and those with inherited wealth; between merchants and professionals, blue collar workers and those who wear white collars. This is not such a case, however, and, once again, we need not attempt to define the boundaries of source of income discrimination. We conclude that the Council did not intend to prohibit the Club from expelling Mr. Blodgett in the circumstances presented here. In context, it is clear that the Club was focusing on Blodgett's behavior in, and use of, the Club, not on the sources of his income. [H]is repeated use of offensive racial and ethnic slurs while on Club premises; . . . his non-joking references to and comments about women, African-Americans, Jews and Native Americans in a derogatory and offensive manner while on Club premises and . . . his use of the Club's facilities to conduct business with persons who publicly expound racist and anti-Semitic views all made the Club a less desirable place-for current members and for prospective applicants as well. Blodgett relies solely on the Club's own words, having proffered no other evidence of discriminatory intent. However, the Club's use of the term conduct business with does not transform its self-protective decision into prohibited discrimination based on the source of Blodgett's income. In the context of the investigative record and the other reasons given for expulsion, a jury could not reasonably have found that his use of the Club's facilities to conduct business with referred to Blodgett earning income from, rather than using our Club to consort with, persons who publicly expound racist and anti-Semitic views. Summary judgment was properly granted to the Club. See LaPrade v. Rosinsky, 882 A.2d at 196.